


Piano Lessons

by reylo_garbagecan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben goes to live with Luke, Ben is sad and misses his dad, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Historical AU, Pining, Rey learns to play piano too, Slow Burn, Soft boi Ben, Suppressed Feelings, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, angsty ben, artist and writer ben, ben does not agree, ben is an emo but instead of mcr its frederic chopin, great depression au, he kinda needs a hug, luke is deaf, minimal age distance for plot purposes, piano player Luke, rey thinks ben is a bro, so does Rey who is a feral train station child, teenage ben and rey, ww1 veteran luke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-05-10 10:45:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 38,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14735492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylo_garbagecan/pseuds/reylo_garbagecan
Summary: 1930.Rey is starving. She was abandoned at a young age, and when she ran from the stifling orphanage, no one seemed to care. She makes her home in the train station and makes her living begging for spare coins. Rey's one small delight is to walk a block from the station and listen to the piano man.He was an old man who lost his ability to hear after being unfortunately placed too close to an exploding shell. Unlike everyone else at the time, he is well off where money is concerned. He cares for a nephew whose parents have gone under in the Stock Market Crash. They searched for opportunities for work while his eccentric uncle takes care of him.Ben hates everything about his situation in life. He hates his parents for leaving him. He hates his uncle for offering to take care of him. He hates his uncle for trying to teach him to play the stupid piano (that he also hates). He just can’t seem to hate the orphan girl that comes every day for free lessons from his uncle.





	1. Living in the Mundane

**Author's Note:**

> This story can also be found on Wattpad where it was originally published. Also, disclaimer: I know very little about pianos and deafness and sign language, and if I misrepresent any of the above I am truly sorry and I mean no offense in my intentions at all.

The clock chimed seven times in every home in the bustling, industrial town of Kenworth, Massachusetts. Ben set his pencil down in sudden realization of how long he had been awake. His uncle's slow footsteps came down the hall, and Ben rushed to collect the scattered sketches and open notebooks that littered his floor. He took comfort in knowing that he could run and stomp as much as he needed to, and his old, deaf uncle would never hear him. Just as the rickety metal of the door handle jiggled, Ben jumped into his bed and threw the comforter over his head.

His uncle's voice was loud, always a shout, "Ben, it's time to get up!"

He threw off his covers and looked up at the old man, "I don't feel like going."

His uncle's expression was blank, "I didn't hear a word you just said."

Ben hated that joke. He huffed and swung his legs over the side of the bed and touched his feet to the cold wooden floor. Grabbing a pencil and a notepad, he scribbled a few sentences.

He handed it to his uncle who always read Ben's notes out loud, which Ben hated, "I feel sick. I don't want to go. Don't make me go. Stop telling that joke."

His uncle looked up, "It's the last day. It's not my fault you stay up too late doodling, and yes, I know about the doodling. You're going."

Ben knew his uncle couldn't actually make him do anything, but he would feel bad for causing him trouble. It would disappoint his parents if he did.

He stared at his uncle and enunciated so that the old man could read his lips, "Fine. I'll be home for lunch."

His uncle took a moment to process before saying, "I'll be out today. I'm going to check on the factory. Make sure you actually go back after lunch. Believe me when I say that I will know."

Ben couldn't get away with anything. It was as if since his uncle had lost his hearing, God had given him an all-powerful knowledge. Ben wished that God would have given his parents a job instead. His uncle didn't need any help with anything. The piano assembly factory he'd started had made him richer than sin. Only rich people could afford pianos. Ben hated pianos. Ben hated the rich. They ruined his family.

Entrepreneurship ran in his family. His father had owned his own auto shop that boomed as automobiles slowly began to grip the country. His grandfather went from working in a factory at age nine to buying the factory out. His mother started her own beauty salon. His uncle handcrafted pianos before figuring out that he could assemble them faster if he opened his own factory.

Failure ran equally in Ben's family. His father's auto shop got shut down by the government for suspicion of smuggling alcohol inside it after work hours during the height of the Prohibition. His grandfather was murdered and robbed by union activists in a bloody strike before his children could finish their childhood. His mother's shop was bought out by a greedy man who thought it wasn't a woman's place to be running her own business. Then, of course, his father and mother had bought on the margin to bail themselves out in a grand scheme, the stock market crashed and left them without a home, a penny, and now, a child. His uncle hadn't failed at business yet, but he had served in The Great War and lost his mind and his hearing after standing too close to an exploding shell.

Ben felt bad for his uncle. His one joy in life had been music, but war had made him a bitter man. He also hated his uncle for being rich enough for his parents to send Ben to for safe-keeping and stability.

His uncle left the house and walked down the street. He had enough money for a car, but he didn't believe in using them. Ben threw on his threadbare shoes, tousled his raven hair, gathered his precious sketches and writings in his old, leather bound folder, and trudged to his final day of his eleventh year of school.

The clock chimed eight times in the train station. Rey's head snapped up from where it had been resting on her chest. She had been sitting inside on a wall begging for spare change and had fallen asleep there. The security guards must not have noticed her, which was unsurprising. Malnourishment had made her appear childlike in size when curled up and therefore too small to be noticed.

Her body ached and her stomach growled. She yawned and stood to her feet. Her pockets had a couple cents jingle in them so she went to the bakery and bought a small loaf of bread. Making her way to her hiding spot in the rafters of the station, she happily munched on bite after bite.

She passed an older couple in fancy garb, and she imagined them as her parents. Rey pictured taking the train to their summer home by one of Michigan's lakes after a year of hard studying with her personal tutor. Her mother would squeeze her into a pretty, flowery dress with snappy heels and a pink parasol to block out the shining sun as they took a stroll by the shore. They would have a picnic on the beach, and her father would have to call her from the famous sand dunes to come have her favorite dish; garlic buttered crab legs and the South's best sweet tea in an ornate crystal glass.

Rey passed by another couple who looked more like she did with tattered clothes and the harsh lines of poverty in the absence of their smiles. She imagined getting home from a simple public education every day the same time that her parents would get home from their factory day jobs. Rey would teach her many younger siblings how to read and write while the simplicity of their mother's home cooked meals made them smile in excitement. They would gather around the table, and her father would ask her to say Grace instead of himself because he knows how much she loves to. She would thank God for the many things He had blessed her with, most of all being a good, happy family despite any shortcomings they may have had. Her mother would comment on how lovely a prayer it was, and her siblings would tease her and tell her it had been too long and that they were hungry.

Rey smiled ruefully. If only she had a family. She longed for a last name. A protective older brother. A sassy little sister. A doting mother. A devoted father. Maybe a pet dog. An education. A white picket fence too while she was at it.

She approached where the walls changed from brick to wood and removed a plank from the wall. She climbed up the ladder that had been left there in construction to the rafter that overlooked the whole station. She picked her way across it with ease, holding a nearby plank for support. Rey's room lay just there beyond it.

Careful not to step off the wooden planks and onto the ceiling, she nimbly jumped onto her small square space with her catalogs that were scattered across the wooden planks. Each catalog had a different person on the front advertising for whatever it was that the catalog was for. They were her friends. She told them tales, gave them names, gave them backstories, and had pretend conversations with them. It was one of the only entertaining things that she could do. She swore on the station's stray cat that she was not insane.

She laid down on her back and closed her eyes. Listening to the sounds of the station, she waited for the clock to chime eleven times so that she could go to listen to the piano man play when his clock chimed twelve times.

Eventually that time came, and she hurried herself back down and over to the block that contained that precious house. She sat on the bench and waited. The clock in the house started to chime, it was loud, she could hear it from the sidewalk every day. She waited in anticipation for the best part of her day to come. After several minutes, it became apparent to her that he must not have been at the house.

Hesitantly, she tiptoed through the front yard and looked in the window to the front room. The piano was beautiful. The room itself was exquisite too. It wasn't really that impressive for the old man wasn't interested in being wasteful, but to Rey the room was fit for royalty. There was a sofa with a wooden table in front of it. The window she looked in from had a seat that accompanied it that she could picture herself sitting on an daydreaming out the very window.

Then the piano. The most divine wood with the most beautiful chestnut finish. Though it was closed, Rey could picture those well-preserved black and white keys shining in the light cast by the sun through the window. Glittering, golden, calligraphic lettering on it told the maker of the beautiful instrument.

Walker.

She yearned just to caress the flawless wood, and ached to feel the chill of the keys on her fingertips. Rey felt like she could be musical. She certainly enjoyed it. Perhaps her family had been traveling musicians. That would explain why they would have been on the train that she was found on.

The old man wasn't home. She was very good at sneaking. Anxiety bubbled in her stomach as her feet pulled her to the cream colored door. Her hand touched the brass doorknob and flinched as the door gave way. It was unlocked. Hurriedly, she shut the door behind her and made her way to piano.

Her fingers lightly brushed on the old wood. She took little time in opening the piece of art. The keys were smooth, flawless, and the most beautiful thing she had ever beheld. She let her hands hover over them as if she was beginning to play. Then, she slowly brought them down to create the sound-

"What do you think you're doing."

Ben Solo froze in his uncle's front room as he beheld a girl sitting at the piano. She whirled to face him, her face white, and she jumped away.

He repeated, "What do you think you're doing?"

She looked like she was about to cry, and then she tried to run.


	2. A Fair Settlement

"Ben, you didn't go back to school!"

The two teenagers flinched as the old piano man's voice boomed throughout the home. Ben caught the girl by the arm before she ran away. He waited for his uncle to figure out where he was. When he walked in, his uncle's expression didn't change.

"You skipped school for a girl. I figured this might happen eventually. I just prayed every night that I wouldn't have to be the one to have to deal with it."

Ben pulled his notepad from his back pocket and handed his note to his uncle, "She is a thief."

Rey yanked her arm from the distracted boy's grasp and exclaimed, "I am not a thief!"

Ben wrote more on the notepad while still keeping an eye on the intruder, his uncle read, "I caught her at the piano when I came home for lunch."

"When?"

Ben let his uncle read his words, "A couple minutes ago."

Rey watched this exchange with crippling anxiety. She trembled from head to foot, and slowly her knees were starting to feel light. She sunk to ground and sat on her heels, hugging her knobby knees to her chest. If they brought the police to her, they would realize she was supposed to be in an orphanage. She refused to go back there.

"You said she was at the piano?"

Ben nodded.

"Then she wasn't stealing. Who sits at a piano to steal? Unless she was stealing the piano, but look at her, too scrawny to do that by herself. She wanted to play."

"She broke into the house!"

He didn't need to hear what his nephew had said to know what his reaction would be. Shaking his head, he stooped down to look at the shaking girl in his front parlor.

"You just wanted to play?"

She nodded.

Ben muttered to himself, "This is ridiculous."

"You can play it."

Rey shook her head, and to everyone's surprise, she moved her hands to make words that the pianist could understand.

I don't know how to play. I just wanted to hear it.

She had learned sign language when she was fourteen. It was her birthday or, at least, her "found you on a train" day. She found a manual someone had dropped on the floor of the station detailing how to do the hand signals. Figuring maybe if her parents were deaf, then she could still talk to them when she found them again. Rey had to be prepared for every scenario.

The man smiled, "I'll make you a deal. You don't walk through any other strangers' front doors. I'll teach you how to play."

Rey jumped to her feet. Ben's eyes widened. The ludicrousness of the situation was apparent only to him. His uncle was going to invite a strange girl, who broke into his house, to his house every day to do her a favor. It didn't make sense to him. His uncle stuck his hand out to her. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet.

"I'm Luke Walker. This is my nephew, Ben Solo."

Rey shook his hand shakily and looked at Ben with skittish glances, "I'm Rey."

Mr. Walker repeated, "Rey?"

Thinking he hadn't understood, she repeated her name.

He chuckled, "No, what's your last name, Rey? Who is your family?"

Her voice failed her, and she shook her head.

"No?"

Her face heated up, and he read her lips, "No last name. No family."

He tilted his head in thought, "Where do you live?"

She glanced at Ben who had suddenly gone quiet, and she panicked. They couldn't know she lived in the train station. They'd tell on her and make her go live in the orphanage again. She'd heard it before in other strangers that "it's for her own good." Stiff collars, dark rooms, moldy rations, and rampant disease was not for her own good.

She quickly smiled albeit nervously and said to Ben while hand signaling to Mr. Walker, "In a foster home. A block or so away."

Ben stepped forward, "You don't go to school."

"My foster family teaches me at home."

Ben wasn't sure if he believed her words or not. He recognized her. Every day, he came home for lunch around 12:30 where his uncle would be flawlessly playing the piano. He always passed a girl who would sit on the bench on the sidewalk. He paid her no attention because it annoyed him how dedicated someone could be to something so trivial as an old man playing music out of habit. His uncle hadn't been home that day, so Ben put the pieces of the puzzle together. He decided not to bring it up in that moment.

"Why aren't you at home learning today?"

Rey signaled, "This is when I take a walk."

Which was true.

Mr. Walker nodded, "Can you come and practice in the evenings say," he thought about it, "around five? Not today though, I have a little work to finish up around here first."

Rey beamed and nodded so much that she thought her head would snap off. Her luck that day had been monumental. She had made an actual friend. She wanted to say that she had made two friends, but she didn't think Mr. Walker's nephew liked her very much. Rey wasn't sure she liked him either. He was tall and scary and yelled at her and left fingerprints where he had grabbed her arm.

"Go on now, your family will be worried."

Luke sat down into a chair and sighed as the little girl left. He eyed his nephew lurking in the corner with a scowl on his face.

He shrugged, "She seems nice. A pretty girl. Probably around your age."

Ben scoffed, "She broke into your house, and she looks like a little boy."

He then remembered that his uncle couldn't hear anything he had just said, "Never mind."

Ben started to trudge back to his room when his uncle called out to him, "Forgiveness is important, Ben. So is compassion."

He didn't look back at him, only muttered, "Thanks, dad. Oh, wait, he's in God only knows where."


	3. Books

Hesitantly, Rey knocked on the door. She hoped that Mr. Walker's nephew would be home since he couldn't actually hear her knocks. Part of their agreement had, in fact, been to not break into anyone's house. She wasn't sure if walking into a house she had been invited into counted as breaking into it since she had never had a house or known people with one before. Etiquette existed, but she wasn't sure how to use it yet.

Ben Solo, to her relief, opened the door and leaned against it smirking, "So, you do know how to knock."

She pressed her lips into a thin line. He had made her angry, but she didn't want to make him any more angry than she assumed he already was with her. Nothing that she could control would jeopardize what she hoped to be the best opportunity she would ever have in her life. So, Rey swallowed her anger and smiled.

"May I come in?"

He studied her for a moment before opening the door wider and stepping out of her way, "You know manners too. Consider me impressed."

Luke stood in the foyer observing the too. He probably would have taken his walking stick and rapped his nephew on the head a good few times if he had been able to hear the conversation. He was deaf, but he was not blind. Luke knew the many faults of the lost boy. Truthfully, he was old and not in the mood to fix them, but Ben's parents weren't coming back for him any time soon it seemed and the summer he was about to spend with him would be Ben's last summer as a child. Adulthood was quick to descend upon and cement flaws into impressionable children.

The old man led Rey to the front parlor and motioned for her to sit on one side of the piano bench. Luke sat beside her and pulled out several thin books from a drawer next to him. Ben rested on the window seat, avoiding watching his uncle and the girl by watching the people pass by on the street instead with forlorn eyes and a curious head resting on his bony knees. Rey noticed him and was glad that he was not paying attention to her, for her first lesson she feared would be a rough one.

Rey was very interested to see how a deaf man could teach someone to play music. She figured it took some added pressure off since he wouldn't be able to hear to what extent the horror of her playing would be. The orphan did not doubt him for a moment though that he would be the best piano teacher there ever was. His nephew doubted it and only stayed in the room to admire how things would go wrong.

For several minutes, Luke pointed out to Rey the notes on the sheet music. The various black notes contrasting the white paper made her head spin combined with the amount of knowledge she was absorbing about music notes. Rey had no idea that there were different kinds of notes that made different kinds of beats. She had no idea that there would be lines on the paper that would tell you want note to play. She certainly didn't know what a treble clef was or why it was at the beginning of each line of music. Also, there were numbers in music, which confused her because she thought that music was art and that art was the opposite of arithmetic. Then there were sharps and flats which could mean that you were playing the same note as before, only it would be in a different place. Rey hadn't even touched the piano yet.

Ben was no longer interested. If his uncle didn't make her play then neither of them could fail and amuse him. They were, in fact, failing to amuse him. Soundlessly, but not unnoticed by Rey, he snuck off to his room. Her relief was great knowing that he could not be present to see her squirm under the heavy amount of knowledge she was struggling beneath. Her heart then sunk when he returned to his window seat. This time he carried a book, but instead of reading it, he was writing in it.

All of a sudden, Luke was pushing one of the small books into her hands and speaking to her.

"Take this home and memorize what I've taught you today. Hopefully you will have noticed that there is much more to playing a classical instrument than just tapping keys."

She nodded with her eyes wide, "Yes, Mr. Walker."

She then remembered to sign to him her words rather than saying them and blushed as she fixed her mistake. He smiled and stood.

"You're welcome to stay as long as you wish, but I am old, so I get to sleep whenever I want to, and right now is one of those moments. Have a nice evening, Rey."

He didn't wait for her to return the parting compliments, just left with his walking stick back to his room. Ben was so focused on putting his pencil throughout the book that he didn't notice that they were alone. Rey knew she could leave at any moment and that really she should, but she was so confused why Ben was marking up a book.

"What are you doing?"

Ben's head snapped up, and he slammed the book shut. He looked angry, but more like he was trying to look angry to cover up that he was flustered.

"It's none of your business, thief."

She let the thief part slide by and questioned honestly, "You were writing in a book, why would you put more words in a book? I'm just curious."

Ben's face was distorted in equal confusion to her's, "What?"

"That was my question. You were scribbling inside of a book. Either you were ruining the words on the page, or you were putting more words onto it and either way I am confused, Ben."

He didn't understand how someone could be so slow, "I was drawing. This is a sketchbook. You draw pictures in it. The pages are blank, see?"

He flipped to a blank page just as he had said and showed her. Her eyes grew wide in amazement, and before he could tell her not to, she sat next to him on the window seat.

Her voice could hardly contain her awe, "You're an artist! I've never met a real artist before."

His cheeks grew red, "Well, I'm not any good."

She shook her head and began to ramble as she tended to do when she found herself actually speaking to someone for once, "No! That's what all artists say, isn't it? I talked to this one person who said that all artists think that they're terrible even though they aren't. She told me that the man who painted the beautiful picture of the starry night killed himself because he didn't think he was any good, but now everyone thinks he is the greatest artist ever!" Her eyes grew wider if at all possible as she exclaimed and grabbed Ben's shoulder who was in a state of shock, "Oh! But please don't kill yourself, Ben. I know you don't like me very much, but I would really hate it if you were to be so sad. I'm sure that your art is marvelous!"

He slowly pulled away from her as she smiled innocently at him. He wasn't sure what to make of her outburst. At least she cared about that fact that he did art, and she called him an artist, even though he wasn't really, which made him feel fairly good about himself.

He stammered as he found himself at a loss for words, "I suppose then that I won't...kill myself. Thank, um, thank you? For the warning?"

She put her hand back on his shoulder, having not gotten the idea from him pulling away that he would prefer her hand not to be there, "It is no trouble at all. Besides, I want to be your friend, and friends always want to help their friends. I think anyway, I'm not very practiced in that area. If you do want to be friends though, then neither of us would be very lonely anymore."

"Anymore? What makes you think I'm alone all the time and have no friends?"

Her head tilted in a state of blissful ignorance, "Mr. Walker said your last name was Solo? Doesn't that mean to be alone?"

He wanted to laugh at her, but he didn't want her to think he was amused, "No. Well, yes, it does mean that but not for me. It's just my last name. End of story."

Her voice became quieter with embarrassment, and she pulled away from him, "Oh. Then you probably have lots of friends in that case because of how interesting you are with being an artist and all. It would be annoying to keep up with me too."

She looked outside and noticed that it was getting dark and panicked. Getting home late to the train station was scary, good people didn't lurk there at night no matter what the security guards tried. Rey jumped up before Ben could respond to what she had said.

Rey was well-versed in imagining things and made up a quick excuse, "It's getting dark and my foster mother would be wanting me back. She always likes it for me to tuck in her twin girls because they like to hear my stories that I tell. I'll see you tomorrow then."

She ran out the door, and Ben couldn't help watching her and feeling a bit sorry. Rey wasn't so bad for a thief, and she had so far always been nice to him whenever he had said something intended to make her angry. She also seemed incredibly lonely. Rey was also right. He didn't have any friends. The one friend he tried to make at school was a bully who accepted his friendship, yet still made jokes at his expense constantly. Then there was the Scots-Irish immigrant he had made friends with last year over how ostracized they were from the rest of the schoolchildren, but he lived at Ben's old home in the South and Ben could only send him telegrams. He couldn't send them back because he didn't have the money for it.

Ben sighed and looked over at the piano where he had watched the poor girl drowning in the first lesson. He had felt the same way during his first lesson from his uncle. Except, he was much less eager to learn than she was. In a way, he could respect that about her.


	4. Sharing

"You mean to say that while my right hand is playing a song, my left hand will be playing something different?"

She had hand signaled this to Luke, who smiled and shook his head, "No, your hands are playing the same song. Each hand has a part of the song, they're sharing the song if you will."

Rey was constantly amazed, "Could you show me?"

He shook his head, "That's more advanced. I will show you, but not today. Today you take what you learned yesterday about sheet music and apply it to the keys."

Luke began showing her where her thumbs went, her index fingers, middle fingers, etc. Each key represented a note on the staff. She had somewhat expected this to be the case, but she was still astonished at how all of the puzzle pieces began to come together. The piano was very complex, but Rey loved it. She loved how her fingers had a place, the notes were made to be played, the keys were made to be tapped. It gave her hope for herself. Perhaps the poor, homeless orphan girl had a purpose. Perhaps she was made for something too. Somewhere, she had a place.

Ben watched her carefully from behind his sketchbook. He was pretending to draw, but he couldn't help but be intrigued. Her attitude was different on this day, he noticed. She didn't seem quite so overwhelmed, as if she had a sort of peace about her.

Her lips curved into a kind of concentrated smile as she picked out the keys which matched the notes his uncle pointed to. Her hair was beginning to fall loose and framed her small face. Her eyelashes looked longer when she looked down at the keys. Ben supposed she did look a bit pretty- at least in that moment.

He had mentioned to his uncle before that she looked like a little boy. Still, she appeared lean like his previous comparison. She had no real womanly features aside from her pretty hair and long eyelashes and pleasantly sculpted lips. Then it struck him that she was starving. He took in how her arms could be comparable to a bone. As she leaned over the piano, her stomach had none of the rolls that otherwise would have naturally occurred. Her cheeks were slightly hollow and her ankle bones protruded somewhat grotesquely from her skin.

He then felt quite guilty. Ben supposed that her foster parents were struggling like the rest of America in what was beginning to be called the Great Depression. Maybe they were feeding those twin girls Rey had mentioned instead of her. Ben noticed she was wearing the same clothes as when he had found her in that room in the first place. He felt angry for her situation.

"Alright, have a nice evening, Rey."

Luke went to his room for his evening nap. Ben didn't understand why he took a nap so close to his bedtime, but he supposed you could do whatever you wanted when you were old.

Rey looked at Ben and remembering her conversation and embarrassment from the day before, took her leave with a slight dust of pink on her cheeks. Ben felt mean. Like a mean little kid. He stood up and followed her to the door, opening it for her in a gentleman-like way.

His voice was kinder, "Rey?"

She turned to look up at him, "Yes, Ben?"

He started nodding, "I'll be your friend."

He smiled a very small smile and closed the door. She was left feeling confused yet overjoyed. Rey had a friend who was an artist. That had to be the most interesting thing she had ever accomplished. Besides making a friend in the first place. For the first time in Ben's life too, he felt like a good person. His heart was whole for a moment. This goodness in him temporarily filled the gap that his parents had left gaping. Then he felt guilty for not missing his parents in those few minutes.

Ben wasn't sure what was required of him to be a friend to someone. Rey was feeling quite the same. Neither of them had had real friends before. Ben had sat in silence with his old friend before, which was what was needed for the both of them since they never got silence anywhere else, but it could hardly have been called true friendship. Rey had her catalog people, her imaginary friends. She stacked those upon and set them in a neat pile in the corner of her "room."

She allowed herself a giddy smile, "I won't be needing you quite so much anymore."

"Ben!"

Ben's uncle called him, and he came to him. He opened up one of his notepads as he walked.

"So what do you think of the girl?"

Ben scribbled on the notepad, "She's not that bad, I guess. I thought you were taking a nap?"

"The light isn't good today."

Ben didn't understand what he meant by that since the sun was setting, but he let it go.

His uncle continued, "Good. That's good."

Ben nodded. He wasn't sure if this was some attempt at making casual conversation, but the silence in between the words was uncomfortable. His uncle sighed.

"Well. I'm going to go to bed now. I'll see you in the morning, Ben."

Ben furrowed his brows in confusion. The light was not good five minutes ago, but suddenly it was. His uncle was an anomaly.


	5. Take Care

Rey sat in the dingy bathroom of the train station vigorously scrubbing at the dirt on her skin. A soap bar sat on the sink which poured the only clean water Rey had access to. Perhaps the bar of soap was not for hair cleaning, but Rey never had much of an option. Her hair was clean, though it wasn't as soft as her friends' hair from the catalogs appeared to be. She stuck her head under the sink and let the traces of soap rinse out. After being clean enough to her satisfaction, Rey unlocked the door and smiled at the sight of no one waiting in line for her to finish. Her skin was red from scrubbing. She was always careful not to get too dirty, but sometimes it was inevitable.

Using the pennies she had collected that morning she purchased a small tube of toothpaste since she had run out from a locally-owned shop down the street. Rey re-entered the bathroom and scrubbed her teeth with her finger with just enough toothpaste to keep her teeth from yellowing. They weren't pearly, but they weren't noticeably discolored. She considered herself blessed with straight teeth and thanked her parents for it every time she smiled. Smiling was the one thing she was proud to do.

Satisfied with her appearance for the evening, she skipped all the way to Mr. Walker's house. Perhaps skipping was childlike, but Rey figured that it was a fun thing to do, and she would not technically reach adulthood for two more years. If she wanted to skip then she could skip. If people wanted to give her funny looks then they could give her funny looks.

She rapped her knuckles on the door with a pep in her knock. Ben could hear her upbeat mood from her knock and smiled ever so slightly. Not enough of a smile to catch the attention of his uncle, but it was enough to make his walk to the door a little quicker.

He opened the door and let her in with no pestering, belittling, or teasing. Only a shy smile and a small wave.

She smiled, "Good evening, Ben."

Rey really wanted to sneak in a sentence about him being her friend and such, but she was afraid of coming on too strong. Little did she know that she had already come on too strong to begin with, and it had worked to her advantage so far. Ben wasn't completely convinced that he liked Rey as a person, the breaking into his uncle's house was somewhat of a struggle for him to overcome, but there was something about her blissful obliviousness despite her sad situation that softened his heart.

She sat down at the bench with Luke and continued to practice reading the sheet music. Ben patiently sat at the window seat sketching out his characters for his story that he was writing. He would look up every so often to observe her progress. Sometimes he would stop and notice how the orange sun pouring through the window would sculpt her face by way of casting shadows. The sun was the most skilled artist in his opinion. It could emphasize certain features, soften some, balance out imperfect features to make the perfect work of art. It was the sun too, which invented the technique of shading for other artists to use.

Slowly his pencil began to trace the outlines of her face and the beautiful shadows placed there by the sun. Her face seemed different, he observed. It was not simply cast in shadow, but her face glowed where it was highlighted as if she were her own separate sun. He feverishly sketched these beams of light that burst from the tip of her nose, the tops of her cheekbones, above her brow, and on her cupid's bow. He began to crosshatch the shadows which softened those beams of light, yet drew the emphasis toward them.

He finished this work the same time that his uncle took his leave of the lesson. She bounced toward him and he shut the sketchbook with haste.

"What did you draw today?"

His cheeks got a little bit red, and his palms started to sweat, "J-just a, um, a, ah, character. A character who I'm writing a story about."

She sat next to him the same way she had when he had told her he could draw, "You're a writer too? You must be the most talented person I've ever met!"

He closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief that she had moved away from the first topic of conversation, "Yes, yes, I write stories. They're not important at all."

"Nonsense," she lightly punched his shoulder, "that's what you said about your art too and we know that's not true."

He shook his head and laughed slightly, "How could you say that though? You haven't seen my sketches."

She blushed, yet arched an eyebrow confidently, "Well that could be remedied if only you would show me one."

He nodded, impressed by her surprising amount of wit, "How about a deal."

She was interested.

"I will show you two sketches if you let me make you a peanut butter sandwich."

She crinkled her nose and laughed, "A sandwich? What for?"

He shrugged in an attempt to be nonchalant, "You should eat something, you look hungry."

Rey wasn't sure if she appreciated that statement though she felt the truth of it weigh her down every day of her life, "Okay then."

In no time, the new pair of friends were sitting side-by-side on the window seat with Ben's sketchbook between them. They munched in silence and Ben ended up flipping through his sketchbook entirely. There wasn't any harm in getting praised thirty times versus two. Just before he was about to flip to the next page, he remembered what the last thing he had drawn was.

"And that's all of them," he said sharply and shut the book.

Rey's eyes narrowed in suspicion, "No it isn't. You're hiding something."

His face burned, "No, I'm not, and if I were, I only promised you two sketches. I feel like I've more than lived up to that."

"What is the matter? I'm sure it's excellent like the rest of them."

He laughed, "Flattering me won't work this time."

She smirked, "So you admit there is a next page."

He rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Yes, there is, but I'm not letting you see it, so you might as well let it go."

She switched the topic, "Would you ever draw someone you knew? Instead of a character, I mean. Like your uncle."

He nodded and took a bite of his sandwich before saying, "It depends on what I see."

She sighed and looked out the window. Her heart missed a beat when she realized that the sun had already set. Rey jumped to her feet before remembering that she needed to exude a bit of calm.

"Is something wrong?"

Her face was pale and her heart was beating quickly as she headed to the front door with Ben dogging her heels, "It's dark. I should be home by now. Thank you for the sandwich and for showing me your sketches they're quite lovely."

She bolted out the door before he had a chance to ask if she was alright walking home by herself in the dark. He wanted to follow her to make sure she made it home safe, but she had utterly disappeared in the night. Ben closed the door and turned around to be faced with his uncle.

His uncle held his sketchbook open in his hands, and flipped to just the page he would have preferred nobody to see.

"Not bad, Ben."

Ben made an attempt to swipe the book away, "Uncle Luke!"

His uncle offered the book freely to him and smiled, "It's a play on words, right?"

Ben was confused as he clutched the sketchbook to his chest like his life depended on it, "What?"

"You drew her like the sun with rays."

Ben understood and shook his head, writing on his notepad from his back pocket, "No, it's just what I saw."

Luke winked at him and walked out of the room. Ben found that man was insufferable. He opened it back up to the picture and looked at it in thought for moment. Pulling a pencil from his back pocket, he titled the sketch "A Rey of Sun." It was somewhat juvenile to him, but it was nonetheless fitting.

Meanwhile, Rey raced back to the train station. As she snuck through the gates, a hand jerked her roughly back through. She yelped and tried to pull free to no avail as her free arm slammed into the metal gate. Her hand latched on the gate to keep herself from being dragged away.

A bony looking man with rags as his clothes took Rey by both of her arms and shook her as he shouted with an insane look about his eyes, "Spare change? Please give me change!"

She screamed, which alerted the sleeping security guard to her situation. He ran to the sound of the shouting and witnessed a poor man scaring a little girl. His baton hit the man sharp between the shoulders, and he fell to the ground. As the man fell, Rey was flung into the gate. Her cheek stung from crashing into the metal, but she wasted no time to thank the guard and escaped as fast as she could from the scene. The security guard was too busy dealing with the belligerent man to notice her slip.

Once she laid on the wooden planks that served as her room, she let herself cry. At this moment, Ben laid in his comfortable bed and felt as if somewhere something was wrong. He shook off the shiver that ran down his spine and wrote the feeling off as guilt for not suffering as the rest of poverty stricken America was. He went to sleep, and Rey curled up into a ball.


	6. Missed You

Rey peered over the bar that allowed her to look over the entire train station. She watched the people below. The clock had chimed four already, and she was too frightened to go down. Never before had she been so scared. Every time she looked at a beggar, people just like her, a chord was plucked in her beating chest.

What if the beggar remembered her and was looking for her?

She found the notion improbable, as she figured she would likely never see him again. There were so many beggars at that time. So many desperate people losing their sanities to feed themselves and their families. She shuddered. She knew how desperate they could get. Rey had seen how desperate they could get. Rey could see everything from her perch in the station.

That was why she could never again come back so late at night. She had been foolish to forget there are more than scary beggars that lurk in the dark. Despite the summer heat, Rey shivered. She had been like that the whole day. Sitting on the rafters convincing herself to brave the mixed company of society. Eventually she would have to. She needed the spare change, the food, the water. Her heart missed a beat. Her new friend.

The clock struck five, and Rey wailed pitifully. She was just too frightened to go down even if it was for her own happiness. She laid down on the rafter and cried with an empty stomach and an empty spirit until she fell asleep.

Ben woke up the next day later than usual. The bright sun had already reached its full potential for the day and greeted Ben's unaccustomed eyes. He blinked back tears from squinting and stood to shut the curtains that allowed the cheerful sun to torment him so. The events of the day before came back to him.

He had received a telegram from his father.

Mr. Solo had sent, "Lost job. Trying out WV mines. Contact you when there."

Ben recalled his reaction with vivid and painful memory. His anger would always take the best of him and choke it away. Luke had tried to calm him down, but it was no use. Ben broke his thumb in a wild swing and broke a picture of his mother. The glass had stuck in his injured hand. Uncle Luke had wrapped up the hand as best he could. It was all he had control over to help. Not even Ben had control over his rage.

Ben wasn't disappointed in his father for losing his job again. He was scared for him. His father had always told him the one job he would never do was mining because he didn't want to risk never getting to see his loving family again. Once Ben had read the word 'mines,' all he could picture was his father's body trapped underneath a physical mountain of rock, and all he and his mother could do was hope that a recovery crew could at least find his body to give him a proper burial. That, or after two years, Ben would have to rush to his father's bedside as he hacks up coal dust where instead of taking his last breath, he takes his last violent cough.

Ben pinched himself to tell himself to get a grip on his mental state. His body trembled for a moment in a tragic combination of fear, rage, and bitter grief. A lonely tear slid down his cheek, and he slapped himself in the process of violently wiping it away.

He was also worried. It turned out to be a good thing that Rey had not come the day before. Ben would not have been a very good friend to her, but he was now concerned as to why she did not come. Had he done something wrong? She had seemed very anxious to get away the last time he had seen her, but he had just blamed it on it being dark outside. Perhaps he had been wrong.

Ben could feel himself getting overwhelmed with emotion between his father and his new and only friend. His heart was beating too fast in his chest, and he couldn't tell if he was breathing rapidly or not at all. Ben slid to the ground from his previous perch on his bed and tried to block out the traffic in his head with the palms of his hands. The rough fabric on his damaged hand only reminded him of how much his life seemed to be falling apart.

Ben wanted his mother to smile up at him and remark at how tall he was and embrace him and only be able to set her head on his chest because of how short she was. He wanted to be able to see what new style she had given her long hair. Nobody else's mother had long hair, and it made him feel proud of her in a comical way.

Ben wanted his father to gruffly pat him on the back because he wasn't ever one for intimacy. The pat on the back would let Ben know that his father loved him and missed him. He would look in his father's aging eyes and see himself, and it would make both of them proud.

His mother and father would argue over the length of his hair. His father would tell him he needed to cut it because it wasn't practical, and his mother would tell him that he didn't need to be practical yet because he was just a boy, and it looked nice around his shoulders like it was. Their bickering would carry over many different subjects, and Ben would gladly listen to each one because at least he would be hearing their voices instead of having to just read their words in a simple telegram.

Uncle Luke opened the door and observed him for just a moment. He had known that something was wrong. He always knew when something was wrong even if he couldn't hear what it was. Luke observed his nephew crumpled on the floor with his hands over his ears and wailing in agony. He couldn't hear what his cries sounded like, but Luke knew all too well the cries that come from missing a father.

Luke sat next to him on the floor and put an old hand on his nephew's back. Ben flinched away from the new contact, but when Luke tried again, he did not.

At last Ben sat up and looked at his uncle with a red, tear-stained face and said to where his uncle could see, "I miss them."

The old man replied and wrapped a tentative arm around the boy's shoulders, "I know, kid. I know. I'll tell you what though. When your father sends that telegram, I'll pay for you to write him a whole letter, and you can tell him everything you want him to know. With that letter, I'll put some money for him to send you a whole letter back. What do you make of that?"

A peace came over Ben's face, and his eye twinkled ever so slightly. He didn't have to say anything for his uncle to understand.

"Good. Now, you've slept a long time. Why don't I make dinner today? Instead of just making sandwiches."

Ben nodded and made the slightest effort to smile. His uncle got up and went to walk away, but Ben grabbed his uncle's left hand first, or at least, the prosthetic one. His actual left hand was somewhere back in France along with his hearing.

His uncle looked down at his arm and then to Ben, "Yes?"

Ben gulped away the emotion already beginning to come back to him, "I'm sorry."

His uncle shook his head and made sure what he had read from Ben's lips was correct, "Sorry?"

Ben nodded.

"Sorry for what, Ben?"

Ben said slowly so his uncle could understand, "Being trouble."

Luke just smiled at him and ruffled his long hair, which was something Ben thought only his father would do, "You're not trouble, kid, any more than I am trouble."

A knock on the door made Ben jump. His uncle saw him, and realized what it was that made him. Luke walked to the door and opened it.

Ben could hear Luke's voice from his room, "I'm sorry, I don't think today is a good day for lessons. Family issues."

Ben imagined Rey doing the hand signals, which he didn't understand, but his uncle replied, "No, no, no don't worry about that at all. It turned out it wasn't a good day yesterday anyway. No, please come back tomorrow, we will be glad to have you back."

Ben got up and hurried to the door, "Rey?"

His uncle was surprised, but he moved for him nonetheless as Ben stumbled outside. Rey took in his disheveled state. Messy hair, red eyes, tears that hadn't been wiped away yet sitting on his cheeks, and his hand bandaged up. Ben did much the same to her. Bruises around her wrists, one on her cheek, and a red welt on her right arm. To everyone's surprise, he hugged her.

She was shocked and had to take a moment before she figured out that she needed to hug him back.

"Ben?"

Still holding her but feeling better by the second, Ben spoke quickly, "I missed you. Why didn't you come yesterday? Did someone hurt you? Where did those bruises come from?"

She mumbled into his shoulder, still somewhat in a state of shock at the physical contact that she had never experienced before, "My foster mother wanted me to clean the house since I had gotten home late the other night and scared her."

"Did she hurt you?"

"No, she would never. She's very kind and gentle, she would never hurt me."

He could find no lie in her voice, "So then who did?"

Ben pulled away to look at her and the purple and blue mark on her cheek. Her face was grave and conveyed fear.

"I shouldn't walk home in the dark."

Ben nodded, and Rey swallowed a sob, forcing her face to betray no emotion.

"Uncle Luke is making dinner. You should eat with us."

She shook her head, "Mr. Walker said it wasn't a good day-"

Ben interrupted her quickly, "It wasn't a good day because of me, so if I say that it's fine then it is fine."

He took her silence as acceptance and pulled her back towards the house where Luke had been observing silently.

"She's going to have dinner with us," he stated with clarity so that his uncle could read his words.

Luke nodded and replied simply, "Okay."


	7. Like a Brother, Or Not

The days passed on, and Rey was making rapid improvements in her lessons and could almost always count on coming a little early for sandwiches or a full-course meal from either Ben or Luke. Ben and Luke both had their suspicions as to some of her fibbing, but they were gracious enough to never confront her about it and always provided her with ample amounts of food. Ben never asked her why she came back bruised, and Rey never asked what his family troubles were or why his hand had to be wrapped up.

Ben's father had not contacted him since the telegram, but he pushed away the sick feeling that broiled in him when he thought about it and denied himself the release of his anger or sorrow. He continued to quietly watch Rey practice the piano. Without being able to help it, he drew many sketches of her and her many vibrant expressions. Rey no longer had to be sitting unaware in front of him, her warm, hazel eyes and nose crinkled in laughter could visit him at any time, be it at a cruel hour in the morning or in the full sun of midday.

Rey didn't ask why he wouldn't show her any more of his drawings, but she sorely wished he would. Nothing made her happier, aside from sitting at the piano, than being able to congratulate her friend on his accomplishments. He too missed being able to show her his drawings since she was one of the few people who praised him for anything, but his head would pound and throb when her face appeared to him, and the agony would not cease until the sparkle of her eyes was sufficiently captured in charcoal.

At that moment, Ben was working on just that. Her eyes were intently reading the music while her hands tapped freely, flowing like a river over the gleaming keys. Ben could not believe that he once thought she would fail as he watched her with secret admiration. Her knack for memory and tune seemed unrivaled save by his uncle.

Ben wanted to draw his uncle next to her, but he couldn't bring himself to. Every time he tried to draw him, he ended up drawing his mother instead. His heart twisted in his chest, but he looked at Rey again and swallowed his unhappiness. Rey needed someone beside her at the piano, the way he had drawn her made her look isolated and lonely. An idea struck him, but he wasn't sure if he was capable of achieving it without a picture of reference as he wasn't familiar enough with the subject.

The playing ceased, and out of habit, Ben snapped his sketchbook shut. His eyes wandered up to Rey and Luke, who were discussing her progress.

She seemed deep in thought as she slowly signaled to Luke, "So how do you play the left hand with only..."

She trailed off, not knowing the proper way to discuss a man's handicap situation.

Luke was unbothered, "Oh, I find that I don't need my own left hand when I have my nephew."

Ben's face flushed as Rey beamed at him in surprise, "You know how to play too?"

He shyly nodded, unaware that he was protectively clutching his book to his chest. It was a habit whenever he felt pressure in social situations, which happened rather often.

Luke smiled, "He's a good left hand. Ben may hate the lessons, but he learned well."

"You don't like to play, but you're good at playing?"

The tips of Ben's ears turned crimson, and he fumbled for the right words, "Well I, I just don't. Playing is...hard. Not, not physically or anything like- I just mean, it makes me forget about what is more...important in my life. It makes me forget about-"

"Your parents," Rey blurted out before she realized what she had done and diverted her gaze in shame.

She looked up at him as he was silent and red faced but not angry. Slowly and cautiously, she continued while Luke looked on in confusion, unable to hear the words spoken between the two young adults.

"When I say this, Ben, I don't mean for you to forget them. Maybe you should focus on things besides them? It would help pass the time until they get back. I've spent years doing everything to keep myself focused on my own parents' arrival, and it doesn't help you."

Ben hadn't the courage to tell her that he actually hadn't thought of his parents solely for some time. His time had been spent more captivated by a pair of alluring eyes and impish grins.

"I have my sketchbook," was all he said instead.

She smiled and nodded, leaving her friend be. Rey had grown accustomed to simply knowing when he wasn't going to add anything more to a conversation. Graciously, she always relented. After all, Rey didn't want to know so much about Ben that he would feel the need to know more about her. It was a mutual secrecy and silence that only the two of them would ever understand about the other.

Rey took her leave, always careful to leave well before darkness would descend upon the sleepy, industrial town. She never left without a bittersweet smile on her face. The lessons were the best thing that had ever happened to Rey in the entirety of her life. They brought her the greatest joy. Rey truly loved everything about the Walker house too. The old looking photographs, the front parlor, the wooden floors, the alternating blue and yellow colors of the walls. It all made leaving it every day so saddening to her, despite always coming back the next day. She hated to leave things that she loved.

Rey loved Mr. Walker. Those kind eyes that had shared nothing but compassion with her and toward her since she met him. She loved the old lines in his face that deepened when he smiled at her in approval. His sarcasm was always hiding just beneath every instruction he gave her, and he hid it well, but Rey could always detect a boyish trace of mischief in the old man's tone.

Rey loved Ben too. Her first friend her own age. If Luke was the father she had never had, then surely that made Ben the brother. Rey had always thought a good deal of what a brother would be like if she had one. She had always thought he'd be tall and scary looking to everyone else so that he'd be a protector in some ways. Though he would be scary, she also knew that if she'd had a brother, he would be gentle and soft-spoken with her out of compassion and kindness. She felt all those things from Ben and assumed it all meant that he was the brotherly affection she had never experienced.

While Rey, sat in her "room" thinking of all the ways her family daydreams were fulfilled by the old man and his nephew, Ben was sitting in his own room thinking about how very much Rey was not like a sister. He couldn't pinpoint how, but he knew as he studied the picture he had drawn of her in the parlor that it would be wrong of him to think about her the way he did occasionally and act as though she was a sister to him.

He sat on his floor with his sketchbook sitting on his knee, pencil in his right hand, and a mirror in the left. The goal was to maybe add himself to the lonely picture of Rey he had drawn earlier instead of his uncle. Ben had never drawn his face, nor did he know what his face really and truly looked like. Slowly, his pencil captured the sharp angles of his jaw, cheekbones, and nose and the soft shading of his dark eyes and long, raven hair.

When he finished, he sat back, and to his surprise, he didn't like it. He studied it closely and couldn't find a piece of it that looked acceptable to him. Rey at the piano looked perfect, but with him added, there was something not quite right. Frustrated, he picked up the mirror and compared his face to what he had drawn. The realization dawned on him and he dropped the mirror.

Ben had captured an exact replica of himself on paper, the only problem was that he didn't like his face. His nose seemed disproportionate and much too big for the rest of him. His face seemed so long and though Ben had tried to make himself look peaceful and quietly happy, the way his face appeared just made him look miserable and full of woe. The disappointment Ben felt was great.

Another idea struck him and he quickly put his pencil on paper. A smile relieved his face of the tension it had gone under while he studiously scribbled. A black mask donned where his face had been. While it didn't look pleasant, it added more depth to the picture, which he preferred. Ben shuddered as he observed how he looked like a demon next to the lonely looking Rey. In a way, he felt as if it were more accurate that way. Ben always felt like such a dark shadow amidst all of Rey's beams of light.


	8. On Accident

"Mom has already sent me three telegrams, but somehow dad has managed to send me none!"

Ben shouted, knowing his uncle couldn't hear him, but it only made him feel better, "He could be dead for all mom or I know! She's still taking care of that stupid, old woman in Alabama while he gets to travel around and—"

Luke placed two hands on his fuming nephew's shoulders, causing him to halt his agitated pacing, "Ben, stop shouting. I don't know what you're shouting, and I would rather not have to explain it to our neighbors."

Ben wrenched himself from his grasp and shouted once more, "They aren't my neighbors!"

Luke had understood that, and the man didn't get truly angry very often, but the only time it really happened was with his moody teenager, "They are your neighbors until your father can manage to hold a steady job for the first time in his life! That's not my fault, kid, so don't go yelling at me!"

Ben didn't bother defending his father's job dysfunction, it was all true, so he stayed silent.

Luke continued, his voice notching down several decibels, but took on a more threatening tone, "Why don't you go write in your book and calm down. I can't have a grown kid yelling and breaking things all the time. I am just too old, Ben. If you want to keep this up, I'll take you back to that therapist."

Ben's face blanched, and he felt sick at the thought of having to go back to such a hated place, "No, Uncle Luke, please, I'll—"

Their conversation was halted by familiar knocks of the door. Luke took in his nephew's simmering state and shook his head.

"Go to your room, Ben. Come back out when you aren't shaking please."

Ben looked down at his hands to see them taut with anger and fear, trembling as he beheld them. He nodded to his uncle and walked back to his room, unintentionally slamming the door. Ben sat on his floor and practiced breathing.

Rey stepped into the foyer and took note of Ben's absence. She had heard some of the shouting while she had been working up the courage to knock, so she didn't bother asking where Ben was. She wished that he would talk to her about the things that troubled him, but he was so secretive. He offered to tell her nothing. Then again, Rey had secrets too that she would rather not share. She almost wished to tell them so that he would return the favor. After all, Rey had plenty of imagination.

Luke disappeared into the kitchen and made casual conversation as he attempted a last minute meal, "How was your day, Rey?"

Rey entered the narrow kitchen and leaned on a counter top, using sign language for him to understand her, "Good."

"You mentioned the other day that your foster mother was ill. Has she gotten any better?"

"Much better, thank you."

"And the twin girls?"

Rey flashed a smile, never forgetting what lie she told, ever the storyteller, "Over the chicken pox in record time."

"Excellent," Luke always tried to question her about her life to find any type of discontinuity, but her alibis were always unbreakable.

They sat at the table together in comfortable silence—Luke not exactly having a choice in that matter—munching on an assortment of summer fruits placed in a basket before them. Rey had never tasted such delicious treats before. She rejoiced in the tangy taste of the pineapple and the mango, and she relished the sweetness of the watermelon cubes. By the end, her fingers were sticky, and she had to excuse herself to run them under the sink.

As she made her way to the kitchen, she rounded the corner and bumped into Ben's chest, stumbling backwards slightly. He placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her and tried for a smile.

"Sorry, Rey."

Her cheeks burned, and she stammered, "No, I should really pay closer attention to—"

He smiled a real smile and shook her gently, "Rey, it's fine."

She smiled back and skirted past him to get to the kitchen sink, and he willed himself not to follow her. He picked up his notebook, which he had dropped in surprise and made his way to his uncle. When Ben entered the room, Luke quirked an eyebrow.

"Are you done?"

Ben nodded and shuffled his feet nervously, wanting to ask his question but scared to know the answer. His uncle sighed.

"I won't send you back there, Ben. If that's what you're wondering, which I know you well enough to know that you are."

Ben shuddered in relief, and he didn't have to say anything for Luke to understand his gratitude. He clutched his book to his chest out of nervous habit, and left soundlessly to his spot at the window seat where he felt his safest. Throwing himself into his writing, Ben never noticed Rey sitting next to him or her innocently wandering eyes.

"Ben," at the sound of his name, he jumped, but she continued as normal, "do you remember when I asked what you were drawing and you said you were just drawing a character? You weren't drawing a character. You were too nervous. What were you drawing?"

Ben's heart fluttered, and his hands fidgeted with the pencil in his hand, "Why do you ask?"

Her eyes betrayed her as she mumbled down at his notes where several small doodles were located along the margins, "I was just wondering."

Blood rushed to his head, and he panicked as he realized she was amongst the sketches, "Oh. I was drawing a character, but..."

Ben trailed off as he had no real courage to tell her that he had accidentally made her a character in his book. Then he would have to explain her significance in his book, to which he would have to elaborate that he accidentally made her the most pivotal character. Her eyes widened and a smile slipped onto her face as she realized. Ben's face went a deep shade of red all the way to the tips of his ears that were buried in his dark hair.

"I'm a character? You were drawing me?"

His blush went deeper if at all possible, and he thought he might faint from embarrassment, "Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to it just sort of...happened. All the main characters I've had were always so boring, and you aren't boring and—"

She interrupted him in a flurry of excitement, nearly bouncing out the seat, "I'm the main character?"

"Oh, God," he threw his head forward and buried it into his knees.

Then a strange thing happened. Rey laughed the most joyful, musical laugh and wrapped her arms around her friend, resting her head on his back. Ben didn't shift or jolt or flinch or make the slightest hint of movement. Where her fingers delicately pressed into his shoulders, an alarming warmth tickled its way across Ben's skin and caused goosebumps to litter his body. It felt as though he'd spent an uninterrupted lifetime burning in the sun only to finally feel the cool caress of a refreshing breeze. Unable to help himself, he hummed a little bit in giddiness and smiled into his knees.

Ben could hear the amusement in her voice and the happiness of what he had unintentionally revealed brought her all in her soothing voice, "Don't be embarrassed, Ben. It's the kindest gift that I think I've ever received."

He laughed in spite of himself and spoke into the fabric of his trousers, "But you weren't supposed to know it!"

Rey's cheek rested on the bend in his spine, and when he laughed it tickled her, "Well now that I know, what am I like? What do I do? Do I sound like an American? "

His tone became oddly serious, even for talking to his knees, "You're you."

Her breath hitched slightly, "You didn't change anything?"

When Ben responded, he made the answer seem so obvious, that she would be foolish to think anything different, "Not one thing."

Her teacher's voice clearing caused her to jump away. She realized what their closeness might have appeared to be, even to someone who could have heard their conversation, but he would be wrong for thinking it of course. Ben was like a brother to her.

Luke said nothing of what he had witnessed, only, "Are you ready?"

She smiled and bounded across the room to the piano, while Ben wistfully watched her go. He didn't draw anything or write anything to pass the time. Ben just listened to the music erupting from her fingertips and imagined her laugh in every joyful song.


	9. Summer Fever

Ben wanted to scream. Instead, he ripped the telegram apart piece by piece and let the shreds scatter in the wind as he sat on the bench in the front of Luke's lawn. After a month of total silence from the man, all he could remember to say was:

Made it.

That was all. It was all that Han Solo had to say to his lonely son who missed him sorely. Luke had read it first. Ben remembered walking in to see his uncle's brows scrunched in confusion. Initially, Ben cried like a little boy. Then he took it outside to examine it in the sun, and his heart hardened.

A hand gently pressed into his shoulder, and he silently turned his head to see his uncle. It was a quiet support that Ben appreciated. He slipped the notebook out of his pocket and wrote a note to his guardian.

"I'm going to need a lot of paper. For the letter."

Rey woke up feeling as if she had been punched repeatedly in the stomach. She lifted her shirt up just to inspect if it was covered in purple bruises. It, in fact, was not, but the wave of nausea as she sat up shed light on the predicament. Rey hadn't been sick in years, which was fortunate as she had no way to treat herself for it. She shivered in a frightful chill, but her skin shone with contradictory perspiration. Her dirty, brown blouse was dark with sweat.

The clock chimed twice, and the sun filtered into the station below. Rey rolled over with a pained groan and debated on what her options were. There was simply no way that she would miss any other piano lesson ever again. She also wouldn't admit it, but she barely found herself capable of getting down the ladder.

With a sigh, she let slip a daydream. It had long been a part of her vision of her perfect family. Her parents—if she'd had them—would take care of her while she was ill. This time, the dream morphed into Luke letting her lie down in one of the guest rooms. He would give her every possible comfort that she knew she would never deserve. Even though she would tell him that she was fine, he would give her a concerned paternal look and demand she stay in bed until she felt better.

Ben would stand in the doorway in his silent way, leaning on the frame and letting his eyes speak for him. Maybe though, she could imagine herself waking from a feverish dream to a cool cloth on her forehead and his hands gently clasping to one of her own. He would blush upon noticing that she was awake, but he wouldn't move. He would stay by her side until she felt better.

Rey's stomach flipped at the thought—and not because of the nausea—because it seemed like the wrong thought for her to have of her dearest friend. It felt like something that went deeper than friendship and entirely different from a familial bond. She wasn't sure what it was, but she refused to let herself linger and think about it any longer. 

Rey couldn't really be sick since she hadn't been in so long. She lived in dirt.

One time she had heard an old woman in the train station say, "It takes dirt to fight dirt," and she had taken the thought seriously since then.

How could she possibly have been sick if she was immune to it all anyway from living in it? No, Rey decided that she was not sick. The headache and nausea must have been because she had not had enough water. The pain in her stomach was simply more hunger pains. The chills were the fact that she was sweating because she must have been hot since she lived in the top of a building, and she had read somewhere that warm air rose. Rey could go to the Walker house early like normal for a meal and to talk to her friends and to wrangle Ben into letting her read more of his writings with his sketches for companionship.

Rey staggered to the ladder in the walls and clutched onto the sides of it so tightly that her knuckles were bone white. Her knees shook as she descended, but once she touched the ground, she decided that if she could have done that, then she could have done just about anything. That would include playing the piano. She paused for breath and nodded to herself.

Rey whispered a mantra as she stumbled towards the house, managing to not be hit by a car in her dazed state only by an utter miracle, "You're not sick, you're not sick, you're not sick."

So caught up in her mantra was she, that when Ben opened the door to let her in, she blurted out, "I'm not sick."

There was a silence. He looked her over. She looked him over.

To Ben, Rey looked pale. Usually, her cheeks were bright and happy, but today, they were drained. Her eyes seemed sunken in. A palm was unconsciously applying a small amount of pressure to her abdomen, and her usually proud shoulders were hunched as if she were sinking in on herself.

To Rey, Ben looked sapped of energy. As his eyes visibly scanned over her, they were distant and dark. A ring of red surrounded them as well, the telltale sign that exposed his previous crying. There was also a purple ring around it all, the dark circles he usually didn't have were protruding sickeningly. Like her, his shoulders were slumped. This wasn't too much of a difference, though. When around her, he usually fell shorter to talk to her with better ease from his great height, but with this, Rey knew better. It was the lack of will to hold himself up, like gravity was pulling on him so much harder.

At last, Ben muttered before sidestepping to allow her in, something like concern flashing in his dark, brooding eyes, "If you say so."

In that moment, as Rey picked up her foot to step into the house, gravity shifted the playing field. Suddenly, the ground met her peripheral view, and Rey was walking on the wall of the house instead. What was down was left, and what was right was down, and what was up was right, and what was left was up. Rey imagined that this would be what it would feet like to be the ticker on a clock. She couldn't tell if she was actually falling or not, her feet felt planted, but her arms swung out wildly to latch onto anything that would keep her upright. Her elbow was caught by a strong hand, and her line of sight was met by Ben, but he was upside down.

His voice sounded like he was speaking through the wall, "You are sick."

Then her vision was encroached upon by thousands of flecks of darkness until it swallowed her whole, and her body went numb.

Ben stared down at the limp girl in his arms. She was breathing, he could see as much from the way her chest seemed to spasm quickly up and down. His own heart seemed to beat loudly in his ears, as he started to panic. He wanted to yell for his uncle, but of course, he wouldn't be able to hear him.

"Damn it," he hissed.

Where was his uncle's sixth sense that something was wrong when it was actually wanted?

Ben held her upper body against his chest, her shoulders against his shoulders, her head listlessly tilting back against his neck. The closest room was his room, so he awkwardly dragged her there with her heels sliding across the wooden floor.

He talked to both himself and to her in his panicked state, "Okay, you're alright, Rey. Everything is going to be fine. I've got you. Everything is fine. I can do this. I can do this. I'll get Luke. I'll get a doctor. You can even have my bed, I don't mind. You're fine. You'll be fine. Don't worry, I can take care of you. I can."

He heaved her onto the bed with an unsurprising amount of ease given her small condition. Sliding his fingers underneath the small arch of her back, he pulled out his sketchbook from where he had been drawing in bed when she arrived to distract himself from the start of his letter to his father. Ben deemed the pencil lost to the blankets as he carefully pulled them up to her chest, leaving her arms out in the  air.

Illness was tricky. She was shaking in a chill, but he knew that her feverish body was hot and needed to cool down. Was he supposed to give her a blanket? Ben decided to leave that alone and get a washcloth from the hallway closet and rinse it under cool water. He caught a flash of his uncle's peering eyes, but he didn't stop as he brought the cloth to his miserable friend. Ben supposed that Luke would follow his odd behavior without needing an explanation.

Ben whispered to her as he wiped the sweat from her brow and brought the cloth across her pale cheeks and the heat that radiated from her throat and the crook of her neck, making circles across her exposed, pyretic skin, "I wish you would breathe slower, it's stressing me more. Please be okay, please be okay, please."

"She is ill?"

Ben snapped in his hysteria, "Of course she is! Look at her!"

Then he cursed and quickly wrote on a notepad for his uncle to read, "She collapsed at the door."

His uncle said the exact words Ben wanted most to hear, "I'll go find a doctor, you stay here."

Terror seized the boy, and he stopped what he was doing to grip his uncle's arm in desperation, he met his eyes, and Ben let him read his lips, "What do I do? Please tell me what to do."

Luke's usually soft and ancient expression hardened, and if Ben had been in the right mindset, he might have been able to think about whether or not this was the expression that the war veteran had donned in the trenches amidst the exploding mortars, "Keep doing what you were doing. That was smart thinking, Ben. You could also get a bowl and fill it with water to dip the rag in, so you don't have to keep running back and forth. Don't lose your head, kid."

Ben nodded and stood to run towards the kitchen for a bowl as his uncle had instructed, and as he filled it, he simultaneously heard the door shut with his uncle's swift departure and a weak cry come from his open bedroom. His heart slammed against his chest as he walked the bowl as fast as he could back to her, the water occasionally dousing his toes when he tried to speed too much. Her eyes had fluttered open, but Ben could tell that she wasn't lucid. It was like sleepwalking, except there was no way that she could get up without falling and hurting herself.

Ben set the bowl on his nightstand and dipped the rag into it, wrung it out, and wiped away at her forehead again, brushing back stray hairs that had stuck in the sweat. She lurched forward into it, her eyes languidly followed his movements before they scrunched up as she cried out again, this time, her cry a little bolder. Her breathing was still irregular, and he placed a palm against her heaving chest.

"Breathe, Rey, please breathe. Relax and breathe. Take a deep breath."

"Ben," she rasped out through haggard, but gradually regulating breaths.

He swiped the cloth over her cheeks and responded, "I'm here, Rey. Just breathe."

"Ben," she cried as she clutched at the collar of his shirt with a fumbling and trembling hand and stumbled over her words, "I'm—Ben, burning. Everything—I'm—it burns."

He shushed her and reloaded the cloth with cold water, sweeping it over her neck and chivalrously apologizing as he popped open the first several buttons of her shirt to wipe across her prominent collar bones and sternum, "I know, I know. I'm trying. I know it does, sweetheart, and I'll do what I can."

Sweetheart, where did that come from?

"More," Rey gasped, "try more."

Ben nodded, thinking of how to fulfill her demand, "Okay, sweetheart. I will."

He stood and got another washcloth from hallway, dipped it in the water, and draped it over her forehead. Ben used the original to swipe everywhere else, going so far as to wipe across her flushed arms, thankful for her choice in a sleeveless shirt (not that she had much choice with her very limited wardrobe).

He whispered softly to her, "Luke will be back soon with a doctor. They'll know what to do, they can do better."

Her brow scrunched, "No doctor."

His voice was stern, "You need a doctor, Rey."

Rey's ability to think about such things in her addled mind astonished Ben, "I don't—Ben—no money. I don't have any."

"Luke won't mind. He'll pay for your medicine. Don't worry. Just get better."

Her breathing started to pick back up again and she cried out in broken segments, "I can't—I—no. No! I can't go—Ben, please. Please—I—I can't go to a hospital."

He cupped her cheek in his hand and looked into her unseeing eyes, wiping away a concoction of sweat and tears and water droplets from the top of her cheekbone, "Listen to me, Rey. I'm taking care of you. You're staying right here. Luke will bring a doctor here, you don't need to go to a hospital. You're staying here."

She sighed contentedly and closed her eyes and whispered, "Thank you. Ben?"

He changed the cloth on her forehead, "Yes?"

"Is this your bed?"

"It is."

She smiled, though it was through a grimace of pain, "It's nice. I've never had a bed before."

He paused, "You have one now. With your foster family."

She seemed to be sliding into fitful sleep again, but she still whispered as Ben's blood turned cold, "I don't have a family. I don't have anyone. Just Luke. Just you."


	10. Night Terrors

"You didn't bring a real doctor."

Luke shook his head and pushed the notepad back to Ben across the dining table, "No, I brought someone better. She was a nurse in the war. I trust her with my health, your health, or anyone's health better than any man."

Ben begrudgingly nodded, his uncle's words were strong, and Ben had little else to do but trust the old man's experience. He scribbled some more words on the notepad and slid it across the table. They'd been talking like that as evening came and went and passed on into the night as the nurse set up in Ben's room. Sometimes Ben would hear a cry or a groan or a whimper from the room, and he would stand to rush and help, but Luke forbade him from leaving the table.

"Maz likes her space, kid, let her work," he would tell him.

What kind of a name was Maz anyway?

Luke read Ben's message he had scrawled messily, "Have you thought about what I told you earlier?"

Luke nodded, "I have."

Ben raised his eyebrows expectantly, "And?"

The old man sighed, "She was only half conscious, kid. It could mean any number of things. I find her home life as questionable as you do, but I find it hard to believe that she has no one. If she was in an orphanage, she wouldn't be able to come here every day, and she looks too nice to come off the street, so she has to be staying somewhere. Maybe she just heard you say family, and she responded like that. She told us she didn't have a family the first time we met her, after all, it wasn't a secret."

Ben shook his head in frustration and jotted down his next thought, sliding the notepad as if it were a stack of poker chips, "But she said she'd never had a bed before. How could that be possible?"

"Maybe her foster home isn't as nice as she always says it is. She obviously doesn't get fed enough there. It could be very easy to believe that she has no bed in that house. Times are hard. It's hard to have children, even harder to have a child that isn't your own."

Those words stung him a little bit, making him think of his own parents and their short letters and the back of his father's beat up car that he refused to sell when times got really hard and his mother's happy anecdotes of the old lady she gets paid to take care of instead of being able to take care of her own child. Then the thought of him being a burden on his uncle turned his bones leaden. His uncle took note of his reddening face and the hurt in his eyes.

He quickly corrected, "For people who can't afford to take care of them."

Ben nodded and scribbled onto the notepad once more. His uncle read it and sighed sadly.

"No, Ben. You're not a burden. Hear me say this; children are not burdens. Not ever. It is irresponsible adults who burden themselves with other things and blame children."

Ben blinked a little too quickly, but gave the faintest of smiles anyway and continued the notepad conversation.

"I'm not a child anymore. At least, I don't feel like one. One more year and it would be legal to draft me into a war."

Luke grimaced, "I don't want to think about you in a war."

Slide.

"Have you ever?"

His uncle smiled bitterly as if nothing was pleasant to him at all, but, for some reason, he had to smile, "Only in nightmares."

Slide.

"What are they about?"

A deep sigh, and Ben feared rejection.

But then he spoke, "In The Great War," his tone was sardonic as he used the inappropriate term for the most hated piece of his life, "eighteen years olds would be shipped in constantly. They would have little training because the government needed them so desperately. Doughboys, we called them. They were all just like you. Something to prove. Eager for someone's approval somewhere. The need to show that they weren't boys anymore. But that's all they were. Just boys. They couldn't even vote for the people in power that sent them to war. The people that hurled them into filthy trenches to starve and cry for their mothers and rush into machine gun fire and to choke on the poisonous gas.

You were born a couple months before I was shipped out. I'd volunteered, thinking it was noble, so I have little excuse for my current state. Your mother and I had fallen out of good grace over your father. He was a draft dodger after all, the scoundrel, little did I know he'd be the smartest one between the two of us. He wanted to be there for you and your mother. I hadn't understood, I hadn't seen you yet. My sister sent me a letter, asking if I could forgive them for just a little while, so they could see me off. Just in case.

You were delightful. It didn't matter that you were only months old, you were so smart, I could see it in your eyes, and I loved you. You were the last thing I saw before I went to war. Your eyes. At first it was the best thing. I wanted to get to see my nephew grow up, so it kept me going. But the doughboys kept coming, and they kept dying, and all I began to see was the murder of youth and innocence and you.

There were only two paths for those boys to take. They either died thinking they were fighting for something honorable, thinking they were something more than child pawns in an international massacre, or they grew up."

Ben swallowed hard in the pause, not sure that he ought to have asked his question in the first place. He wasn't sure that he liked the answer he was getting, but his uncle never talked about the war. He'd never talked about something as sentimental as the first time they met. It was Ben's responsibility to listen. Even though his worry for Rey was nagging at the back of his mind, and he was slowly growing more horrified, Ben owed his uncle an attentive audience.

The notepad slid across the table again, "What do you mean by grew up?"

"They became exactly what the government wanted them to be. They lost themselves to the war. They stopped crying when they had to take lives. They carried on jokes about the way men died. They became familiar. Back then, I had nightmares that among the civilians in a building that collapsed in France was you. One time, Leia sent me a letter telling me that you had taken your first steps. That very day, I saw black haired toddler wandering through the streets of a French town we were fighting for control of. To this day, I don't know if the child was real or not. Nobody else saw it, and I only saw it the one time.

Now, my nightmares are different. I see you as you are now. You're exactly like the boys were. Even better than them. You're taller and stronger and smarter. I wake from nightmares that a war starts and you become eligible and one of the two fates of the boys in war becomes you. I'm ashamed that the worst ones aren't the ones where you fall. They're the ones where you grow up."

Ben's eyes were blown wide. He bit into his bottom lip sharply as he attempted to conjure up anything to respond with. What could he say to his uncle, after all? There wasn't a correct response. He couldn't thank him for caring for him when it was his uncle's care that brought him the nightmares. Could he say he was sorry for adapting into a monster in war if they were only in nightmares?

"I'm going home now."

The old nurse's voice broke the thick tension much to the overwhelming relief of Ben. She was an older woman with brilliant dark skin and stark black hair with shocks of grey sparsely scattered throughout. The nurse, despite her age, was timeless. Deeply rooted wisdom sat in her eyes, which made Ben a little more than intimidated of her.

Ben cleared his throat after sitting so long without needing to speak and being on the verge of boyish tears for the whole of his uncle's speech, and when he spoke, his voice was thick, "How is she?"

"She will need to rest for several days. I will be back in the morning, but it seems the worst has already come to pass."

He nodded in respect, "Thank you."

Her eyes narrowed as she sized him up, "The girl will be very tired. Do not try anything foolish."

Ben's face flushed, and he stammered, "I don't know what you mean by that. I wouldn't—it's not—I'm not—"

"Don't trouble yourself," she waved him off and left.

Ben turned to his uncle, who sighed and made a shooing motion, "You can go in there now, I suppose. Don't ask her any questions though. Let her rest."

Ben only lingered for a moment longer, not exactly wanting to leave him after the heaviness of their interrupted discussion, but Luke seemed impatient for him to get on with it, so he did.

Rey was propped up on several pillows that he didn't remember having in his room. Her eyes were closed, so he had assumed she was asleep. He crept along the floorboards and sat into the chair that had been placed bedside earlier.

Even in sickness, Ben found her beautiful. With shame, he took notice of how a flush had returned to her cheeks and how the perspiration made her skin glow in the low light from the kerosene lantern.

His uncle's home had electric power, but the lantern would disturb her sleep less, they had decided.

Her eyelashes laid long and perfect on the fever rose of her cheeks. Her lips were parted slightly, unusually red in the contrast of her paled skin. The freckles that dusted her nose stood prominently out, and Ben smiled, but he wished he didn't like her so much when she was asleep. It wasn't exactly something to be proud of.

Ben blushed as he took notice of her somewhat state of undress. It wasn't really anything, but Maz had changed her into an old slip to keep her cooler than her sweaty blouse and boyish trousers. It had been his mother's when she used to live with her brother. She had a drawer in his dresser of all the things he'd found of hers and collected there. It wasn't anything to covet, not made from silk or a brilliant color or made for anything other than for a woman to rest comfortably in.

It was just that Ben was unused to seeing Rey really like a girl. He found her features attractive, yes, but she was never a very feminine being. She was unreserved with her words, she wore trousers, she ran, she got dirt smudged on her face, she didn't cut fruit up into little slices and eat it with a fork, she didn't cross her ankles when she sat, and she didn't wear slips.

Her collar bones looked like they could collect water, which pained him to notice. Her sternum protruded slightly before disappearing in the neckline of the slip, and Ben vowed that he would do better than peanut butter sandwiches while she recovered there. His cheeks turned crimson as he recalled earlier that day when he had smoothed his palm over her chest to apply pressure and steady her breathing. When he had dipped into the curve of her collar bone with the washcloth—the same one that presently sat on her forehead—to cool her down. His eyes trailed down her shoulders and her arms to her hands. He wondered if they were calloused or soft.

Ben smiled down on her and wondered how he was lucky enough to find the greatest friend in her and be able to keep her long enough for him to think about what it felt like to hold her hand. He gingerly slipped his long fingers through hers as she laid silent in his bed. It didn't matter if he was the stranger in his own room, he would gladly do it again if it meant she would never scare him as much as she had that day ever again. He leaned forward in his chair and sweetly kissed the back of her hand. Ben settled his forehead against their clasped hands and fell asleep there.


	11. A Lessons in Cards and Abandonment

"Are you sure?"

Rey rolled her eyes good-naturedly, "It's your bed, Ben. Besides you're going to hurt yourself if you keep falling asleep in the chair."

Ben rubbed the back of his neck as an unseen blush steadily crept up to his ears, "You might get too hot or you'll get cold and I'll steal the blankets or I might push you off the bed or say something rude in my sleep or—"

She stopped him with a playful flick to his ear, though they were hidden safely behind tufts of dark, wavy hair, "Stop talking yourself out of it. I won't sleep if you're not comfortable, so get in or watch me not sleep all night long, which would be very bad for my poor health."

He sighed and conceded the argument. She always won arguments like these. While staying at his uncle's home, Rey had made him read snippets of his story to her, made him tell her what all the crumpled up papers on his floor were, made him carry her to his window seat to see the sun, and now was making him sleep from the comfort of his own bed beside her.

Cautiously, he slid into the blankets, staying to the far edge of the bed. She rolled over on to her right side to look at him. He timidly looked at her from the corner of his eyes and tried not to have silly teenage thoughts about the fact that she was only wearing a slip and that they were sharing the same blanket. What he had agreed to wasn't proper at all. Not that Rey ever minded social norms anyway, but he felt like he needed to confess his sins. He wasn't even Catholic.

"You need a pillow."

Ben hadn't noticed that his head was just lying on the mattress, but he didn't mind it too much. After all, he was somewhat in a state of bliss since his back had satisfyingly popped all the way up when he finally laid down properly. Sleeping in chairs was not an easy task, especially not after two nights in a row and especially not hunched over in the same position two nights in a row.

"I'm fine," it wasn't a lie.

"No," she whined, "I have all of your pillows, take one or two."

He shook his head and swatted her hand from reaching behind her head and pulling out a pillow, "Rey, I really am fine. You need to sit up to get better, so you need the pillows."

She huffed stubbornly, "Well why don't we share then?"

Ben turned a striking shade of pink, "What? That's, that's not—I don't think I—it isn't. No."

"If I said I was cold, would that make you feel better about it?"

He chewed the inside of his cheek as he watched her and weighed his options. At that point, there were certainly real reasons to disappoint her, but he had already agreed to one improper thing. What could be the harm in another? It wasn't as if he didn't want to hold her as she slept. That was something that he had thought about for quite a long time, if he were being honest with himself, though it was loathe for him to admit it to himself.

Without being led, Ben pushed himself up and rolled over to her. She smiled and pulled his head down to rest at the spot where her shoulder sloped into her neck, her arm scooping around to cradle his head. His heart pounded wildly out of his chest as he wrapped his long arms around her waist, his right arm resting atop her hip.

It was the most comfortably uncomfortable position he'd ever been in. Malnourished and bony she was, protruding bones making a bumpy surface to rest his head on, but she was still unexplainably soft and gentle. There was something about how near his heart was to her's that made him hold her a little bit tighter and made him nest his head further into the crook of her neck. All at once, he felt protective and protected. He sighed contentedly and the sound tickled the soft skin of her neck.

In Rey's daydreams of having a family, she always thought she might share a bed with her siblings if they were cold or frightened of the dark. Perhaps, yes, Rey was trying to vicariously live out all of her family fantasies in the time she was spending with Mr. Walker and his nephew at their home. However, as she absent-mindedly ran her fingers through Ben's hair and delighted in the warmth and comfortable pressure that his close proximity afforded her, Rey couldn't shake how wrong it was for her to think of Ben as her brother.

She looked down at his face. His eyes had fluttered closed, and his lips were pursed open just slightly. Rey could feel his chest expanding and contracting against her as his breathing slowed to a state of rest. He was, Rey let herself admit only in the company of the night, beautiful. Her heart swelled in her chest and ached painfully against its restrictions. She fell asleep staring at him.

The night after that, Ben was teaching her how to play another card game.

Ben laid down a Queen of Spades face down, "One Jack."

"Liar."

Ben grumbled as he scooped up the formidable discard pile and added it to his hand, "I should stop teaching you card games, you make me look bad."

Rey beamed at his praise, albeit reluctantly given, "One Queen."

Ben shuffled through his abundance of cards in frustration, "I have almost the entire deck, surely I have all those. Liar."

With a smug smile, Rey flipped her card to reveal that he, once again, was incorrect, "I think I know how to play better than you now."

Ben laughed, "How so? Two Kings."

"You ought to know by now that you shouldn't assume anything. One Ace."

"Two ones."

"One two."

"Two threes."

"Liar."

Ben smiled giddily, feeling that finally, he had caught her, "Thats a bit brave, considering I have almost the entire stack. Don't you think it possible that I might just have two threes?"

She gave a devilish expression that, up until he'd taught her to play cards, he hadn't thought her capable of, "I do think that's possible, but you laid down three cards."

Ben cried, suddenly fearful, "I did not!"

She reached over to flip over a card, which was a three, but flipped over two more to reveal a four accidentally sandwiched between the two threes, "You did."

He added the pile to his collection, grumbling all the while, "Well I didn't mean to. Your turn."

"Your problem is that you try to get rid of all your cards too quickly, if you get rid of them one at a time, you won't have to lie quite so much. One four."

Ben rolled his eyes, "Whatever. I'm not even going to bother calling you on that one. Two fives."

"One six. I actually did lie about the four."

"Alright then, liar."

Rey teased, "That didn't mean I was lying about the six!"

"One seven."

"Liar."

"I got you that time," Ben smiled smugly, only for her to flip the card over and reveal that he'd laid down a two.

He rubbed his eyes, and she snickered at him, "Did you really?"

"Well I thought it was a seven at least."

"That's the second time you haven't been able to read the card, are you sure you're alright?"

Ben smiled and waved her off, "Fine, just in desperate need of some reading glasses most likely."

Losing at the game steadily became normal and his frustration began to die down as he accepted his fate, "Two nines, Rey?"

"One Jack. Hm?"

Ben shifted as if the topic made him uneasy, but he quickly recovered his countenance to avoid making her feel the same, "Three Queens. You've been here for a couple nights now, which is great, I like having you here, and I want you to stay as long as it takes for you to feel better, but aren't your foster parents going to worry? Do they know where you are?"

Rey's face paled, and he graciously didn't look at her while she thought up a lie on the spot, "Two Kings. They actually think I'm at the volunteer hospital. They were worried about the little ones catching anything, so that's where they told me to go. I didn't want to believe I was sick, so I came here."

"Liar."

"What?"

Rey's blood froze, and she looked up only to see that he was flipping over the two cards she'd laid down. She sighed in relief, and happily collected the discard pile into her hand.

Ben was triumphant, "You see, I knew because you never lay down two cards, so you were compensating," he caught sight of her white face, "Oh. Are you—"

"Fine."

He scooted closer, "No, it's late, you probably need to rest."

She shook her head, "No it's—"

He was already packing the cards back into the little box he kept them in, "Don't worry, I forfeit, you were winning anyway."

Rey was surprised by a sweet kiss on the crown of her head, and she tucked her knees up to her chest, blushing as he went to put the cards away.

_You wouldn't blush quite so much if you only thought of him as a brother._

She scolded herself mentally. Ben went to sit back in his chair, but she gave him a pointed glare, and he conceded to pad across the floor and slide in next to her, reassuming the same position from the night before. He wasn't quite done talking though.

He mumbled into her shoulder, "Why didn't they take you to the hospital themselves? It seems dangerous to make you walk there when you're sick."

Rey suddenly found her position compromising with his ears so close to her beating heart, she prayed he couldn't hear how hard it was beating, "Maybe it was dangerous."

His arms unconsciously tightened around her, "I'm glad you came here."

She smiled and fiddled with the ends of his hair, "Me too."

Ben pushed his head up to be able to look at her, he had a lazy smile on his face, as drunk in giddiness as any boy his age from contact with a pretty girl, "I always wanted to ask."

"Ask what?"

He giggled slightly, which was a foreign sound for Rey to hear from him, "Are you British?"

She shook her head, stifling a giggle of equal proportions at his odd behavior, "Not as far as I know. The headmaster of my first orphanage was British, so I just adopted the voice of the only adult in my life," she smiled cordially, but Ben could detect a hint of sorrow in them.

"Besides," she added as an afterthought, more to herself than to Ben, "I don't know who my parents are. For all I know, they could be from England. Maybe they liked to travel. It would explain why I was—"

She faltered as she realized she had an audience. Ben's eyes were wide and expectant. They were tempting, Rey had to admit. He had to look up at her and such a rich brown color too made it seem like he could read her very soul. Rey had never personally met a real puppy—stray dogs in the station mostly— but she figured in this exact moment, Ben Solo might as well have counted as one.

Then he spoke, and Rey's chest buzzed at the sound of his silky low and serious voice, "Why you were what?"

Was it her imagination the way that he looked up at her in—what could she call it —admiration? Was the flicker of his eyes curiously darting to her lips when she breathed a strangled breath through them made up in her mind? Would it have disappointed her if the answers to those question were yes?

_Maybe it's time to stop thinking of him as your brother_ , a traitorous voice cried out in her.

In her unfocused mind, she let the truth slip like a weightless breath of air, "It would explain why I was found on a train."

Ben blinked several times as he turned the thought around in his mind. She wasn't lying. It was the most sincere thing he had ever heard her say, and it grieved him to hear. He couldn't imagine it. He didn't know how old she would have been when she was left, but he couldn't imagine a single moment when Rey could have been considered unwanted. Ben had only known her before as the gangly girl who broke into his uncle's house, and it had taken him so little time to want to never leave her side. Yet, there was something so familiar to her now.

"So you know how it feels," was all he could barely manage to whisper.

"How what feels?"

"To be abandoned," his voice croaked out the last word, and he cursed himself for weakness.

_No, he was definitely just like a brother_ , she reminded herself.

Something like sorrow swirled into her chest as she thought about the word he'd used. Abandoned. How could he say such a thing? Her parents didn't abandon her. Rey hadn't said that at all. It was just where she was found. It was a misunderstanding, and they had probably been searching for her her whole life. But was it? Were they really?

_No, he was right_ , she conceded. That made her more angry. She'd never really been angry at him before. She didn't like it very much, but it didn't stop her from being so.

Ben could feel her tense beneath his arms and head, her mouth pressed into a thin line, and his stomach flipped, "Is something wrong?"

"No," she said in that voice that women used when something, in fact, was very wrong, and they just refused to say so.

"Yes," he stated simply.

Her eyes narrowed but didn't look at him.

"Yes," she admitted.

"Are you mad at me?"

"Yes," she repeated harshly.

His heart dropped, of course, he wasn't surprised. There was nothing Ben did better than mess up good things in his life.

Ben stammered, panicked, "I-I'm sorry, what did I say?"

He moved to sit up, but her hand behind his head rendered him immobile. Rather than the happy comfort he had felt earlier, he felt awkward and trapped.

"Just go to sleep, Ben," her voice was cold and distant as she dismissed him.

He strained to look up into her usually warm and happy, hazel eyes, only to find them dark and deeply sad, and his voice traitorously wavered, "No, Rey, please. I'm sorry, tell me what I said?"

"I was abandoned," she stated as she finally tore off a layer of childish, blissful innocence to admit the fact to herself, "but you weren't."

Ben scrunched up his eyebrows in confusion. Wasn't he? Wasn't the feeling of abandonment the very dread that had settled in his bones every morning that he woke up in a house that wasn't his own?

She continued bitterly in a tone he had never heard her use before, "Your parents left you, but they're coming back someday. Mine aren't. They left you with a wealthy uncle, so that if they could not, someone could provide for you, but I've been—I'm just—"

_Alone. Living in a train station_.

The words floated on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back all the while Ben soaked up the look on her face, burning it into his memory. Her face was pinched in unhappiness, and he was as curious as he was upset with himself. What was she holding back? How could he be so foolish?

A tear slid down Rey's cheek and she spluttered as an embarrassed flush fanned over her cheeks at the evidence of her emotions, "So just stop feeling sorry for yourself, Ben, and write the stupid letter to your father so they can feel bad for you and come rushing back to make your family whole again. Then you can get everything you want, and you can leave this town since you hate it so much and leave me and leave your uncle who makes you play the piano that you can also leave."

Ben's voice was quiet as he choked on his pathetic sounding words, "I don't want to leave you."

In an odd clash of bitterness and tenderness, Rey ran her fingers through his soft, midnight locks and said in a soothing croon, "But you will. Please just go to sleep, Ben."

He reluctantly obliged and pondered her words, the fact that he shut his eyes the only confirmation that he had heeded her plea. It was impossible. How could Ben sleep when he was suddenly confronted with the reality that one day his parents would come back for him, and he would have to leave Rey?

_It isn't fair_ , he thought morbidly.

He couldn't have both his parents and his only friend. One day, he would have to choose and learn to live with one part of himself always feeling hollow. They both ignored it when his shoulders began to gently tremble and thick, hot tears torrented down Ben's cheek to delicately splash onto Rey's shoulder and collect in her hollow collar bone. He tried his hardest to collect himself and force a fitful state of rest upon himself.


	12. Family Matters

When she woke up again, he was still asleep. She felt uncomfortably warm, and she went to wake him for a reprieve. Rey paused. The hand that sat on his shoulders could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his body. She noticed his furrowed brow and the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

"Oh," she whispered, fear ebbing into the flow of her voice.

She shook his shoulders gently and crooned, "Ben, wake up. Wake up."

He made a soft sound in his sleep, but otherwise, he did not stir. Rey nodded to herself and rolled his body off of hers. Feeling much better herself anyway, she threw her feet out of the bed and hurried to the front parlor where Mr. Walker was about to wake the neighborhood with one-handed piano playing. She latched onto his elbow, startling him, and pulled him to his nephew wordlessly.

"Rey, you should be resting—"

Luke's eyes fell onto Ben twisted in blankets with sweat running down the sides of his face in rivulets. He looked to Rey whose lip trembled, forgetting all about her conversation with Ben the previous night in favor of guilt and worry.

Her fingers danced in the air as she spoke to Luke the way he would understand it, "I'm sorry, it's my fault. Please don't make me leave. Let me help."

Luke nodded and went about the room to find all the things which had allowed Rey to be brought back into good health. A bowl of cold water and a cloth was thrust into her arms, and she knew only what to do with it from the vague, fever-riddled memories she had of Ben helping her.

He gave her a gentle smile that told her he wasn't upset with her, "I'll be back with Maz."

The touch of the cold water to his face seemed to instantly rouse him. His spine arched off the bed, and he clawed for something in the air. Rey could see a cloud of confusion over his eyes.

His voice was a hoarse rasp, "Mom?"

Ben's searching hand found Rey's arm and slid up to brush his fingers against her face, but all without seeing, as if he were a blind man dependent on touch, "I miss you. Is that you?"

Her voice was soft despite being startled beyond reason, "No, Ben, it's Rey."

Further startling her but for a different reason entirely, his thumb brushed over her bottom lip as he seemed to give a wistful sigh, "Pretty Rey."

Rey frowned and swatted his hands away, "Stop that and stay still, you're ill."

His eyes closed and he muttered on a drawn out melancholy breath, "I don't want to leave Rey. Don't make me leave  her."

Guilt swarmed her as she understood his feverish pleas for what they were and recalled the dark turn of their conversation the night before, "No one is making you go anywhere. I didn't mean what I said, Ben. I was just angry and upset. It didn't mean anything. I don't want you to go, you're the best friend I've ever had. Stay with me."

With his eyes tightly pressed shut, Rey was startled off of him by a spasming that consumed his limbs and body. His head jerked back and forth rapidly as if he were frantically searching for someone in a crowd. His spine curved up repeatedly, heaving his chest into the air and pushing out sickeningly strangled breaths. His legs kicked out wildly as his arms were held down only by twisting his fingers into the sheets of the bed.

_This is different_ , Rey entertained the thought. It wasn't quite the same as the fever she'd had. Ben would have told her if she had done this.

She thought back to the day prior and all the signs she'd missed. How his hands and feet were so cold, he was always hiding them under the blankets. How he had misread so many cards in their hours of card gaming, his eyes had failed him so many times. She hadn't thought anything about any of it. It was all her fault. If she hadn't showed up at the Walker doorstep, Ben wouldn't have caught the fever. Another thought chilled her to the bone as the image of Mr. Walker came to the forefront of her mind. She and Ben could push through, but he was too old and frail. He would surely die and it would all be her fault too. Then she would never hear his music again or see his smile or exchange words with him in the language that Ben could not grasp try as he may—Ben would be taken away too.

On one hand, she knew she wasn't being logical and that without appearing to the Walker household, she would have been the dead one with no one to miss her except for Luke and Ben who would have never known what happened to her. However, it gave her more motivation and resolve to grit her teeth through her guilt to make things right if she thought about everything unreasonably.

Rey heard the tell-tale shuffling of the old nurse's feet followed by Mr. Walker's loud thumps, unaware of just how loud they were, enter the sick boy's room. She spun to face them with exasperation and desperation evident on her face.

Maz leapt into action, not even taking the time to scold Mr. Walker and Rey for being in her workspace, which was something that Rey took note of and worried over considerably. The situation must have been dire.

Then Maz started to address them in broken, half-formed thoughts and Rey's legs began to feel weak with fear, "The fever is much worse than—I've had ten patients with the same—this is the worst—he'll be lucky if he—"

_He'll be lucky if_ , the words Rey was desperately hoping would not come out of the level headed nurse. Luke couldn't hear what she was saying, but he understood anxious babbling when he saw it. He reminded Rey of something.

Her hands flew up and she frantically signaled to him, "Luke, you can't be in here, you might get sick—"

An anger she'd never thought the old veteran-turned-pacifist was capable of flashed in his eyes, "Thats nonsense, I won't leave him, he is my sister's son who has trusted me with his life!"

Maz turned sharply to him and added in a tone that left very little room for arguing from Rey's standpoint, and she paused her work long enough to signal to Luke, "Get out, Luke. If you catch this fever, you will die. Rey can stay if she wishes, the fever won't take her twice."

Rey sighed in relief, while Luke seemed to boil over, but Maz silenced him with another demand, "Go write to your sister. The boy needs his mother, and his mother needs to be here should the worst of the scenarios come to pass."

At that, Luke nodded dumbly and left the room without a word. Rey let her head hang in her hands. Maz went to work. Ben cried out.

The day went by much like that. Luke was quarantined, save for the fact that he was allowed everywhere in the house except for exactly where he wanted to be. Rey flitted between trying to help Maz by fetching every single thing she could ever need so that the nurse would never have to leave Ben's side and reporting every change in the fever to Luke, who sat in Ben's window seat after sending a very urgent letter to his mother. Around the evening, Rey found herself wandering over to the old man, still sitting in his nephew's preferred seat.

Rey sat next to him and leaned her head against the wall, feeling drained, "How long till your sister receives the letter?"

"It shouldn't be too long. I sent a telegram too. Leia will get that before the letter."

"What about his father?"

"I sent him a telegram too. I hope he checks it. Sometimes Han doesn't open correspondence. He gets too wrapped up in the job."

Rey was hopeful for lighter conversation but unfortunately, Luke was quite unable catch tone, "He is in mining, correct?"

Luke nodded, "He isn't supposed to be. It was the one job we all told him he couldn't have."

Rey decided light conversation was not something that fit the mood of the house anyway, "You should rest."

The old man shook his head vehemently, "No, if anything happens—"

Rey's fingers dancing in the air cut him off, "If anything happens I will come get you. I will stay up all night with him."

She could see the moment that the old man allowed himself to feel weary. It was like winter passing over his face. He nodded and stood.

Before he thumped out of the parlor, he turned to Rey and said, "He likes you very much, you know. Every time we have a piano lesson, he sits there and he draws you. Every time. If—when—he wakes, you should trust him with the truth, whatever the truth may be."

Rey swallowed the lump that formed in her throat. The truth. Did they know she was lying? About her family? About her home? Or was it something else? Did Luke suspect that she had feelings for his nephew that went deeper than friendship? Was it a truth? If it was a truth, it was a truth she had yet to consider.

And what of Ben? _He likes you very much_. Didn't Rey already know that or suspected it at the very least? She hadn't seen his sketchbook in so long a time, perhaps that meant that Mr. Walker was correct, and it was full of drawings of her. The way she had noticed him looking at her the night before, before the argument, when she had seen _admiration_ in his eyes. Then what he had said in the morning when the fever had taken away his inhibitions to not say such things as pretty Rey.

None of that would matter if he passed away in the night, however, as Maz seemed reluctant to include as a possibility. Rey jumped up and quickly made her way back to her friend. When she got back he was— _still_.

His face still had the sickly pallor to it, bone white. Ben hadn't lain still all day long, he was always jerking and kicking or muttering under his breath at the very least. Maz was holding his hand between her two tinier and wrinkled ones. She was still too, like she was praying.

The image caused Rey to muffle a cry into her palm and nearly fall backwards. Maz turned to her after gently laying Ben's hand back down.

"He will make it through the night, child."

Rey nearly shouted but remembered to keep her voice a hoarse whisper, "You scared me, I thought he was—"

To her surprise, the old woman pulled her into a hug and patted her back in a gesture of comfort and affection that could only be maternal, "No, child, he is only asleep."

Rey allowed herself one shuddering sob, before she pulled her anguish back into herself and faced Maz once more, "Please tell me he will live. Please tell me I haven't killed him by coming here."

Maz patted her hands, "I cannot tell you anything for certain. Perhaps you would like to talk to him? He is sleeping, but he may hear you if there is anything you wish for him to know. I will leave you alone."

True to her word, the woman hobbled out and closed the door behind her. Rey sank to her knees before the bed and latched onto his hand. She prayed for what felt like hours, till the sun had set and the ground had long been cold in its absence. Then she stood and searched the room for his sketchbook. It was closed and laying inconspicuously on the ground in the corner of the room.

She picked it up and set up a chair for herself next to Ben. With the book laying on his bed, one hand free to turn the pages, and the other hand with her fingers intertwined with his loose and cold ones, she perused his art, maybe somewhat guiltily.

"I'm going to look through your sketchbook, Ben. I know you wouldn't like it, but you'll just have to get better so that you can wake up and yell at me for it later."

She flipped through all the drawings she had already been allowed to see and had committed to memory until she got to the one picture he hadn't allowed her to see all those weeks ago. There was no doubt that it was her. She was glowing.

She blinked away the tears in her eyes and said in as much an unaffected voice as she could to him, "You draw me much too nice. I'm sure I don't glow in the sun, and my hair certainly never looks quite that clean. I am honored that you decided to keep the freckles, however."

Such was the way that she commented on every picture that she came across in his sketchbook into the early hours of the morning. They were all of her. Every single one. At some point she began to cry as she spoke to him, and she never really stopped until she came across the very last picture and closed the book. The sun's tentative morning rays peeked through the curtains, and Rey fought the urge to lay her head onto Ben's arm and fall asleep as close to him as she could manage to be.

Instead, she heard a knock at the door. Then the door opened, and Rey stood up. Slowly, she walked out of the room and found herself faced with a strange woman. Except, it wasn't a strange woman despite the fact that Rey had never met her before.

"Who are you?"

The woman seemed distrustful and tired, Rey tried to smile into the eyes which looked so similar to the eyes she had come to admire, "You must be Ben's mother, I'm Rey. A friend. I'll go find Luke."

The woman had little chance to respond or ask why a friend was staying the night at her brother's house in the midst of what seemed to be a family only ordeal. Rey bounded off to Luke's room, where one tap to his shoulder sent him bolting upright.

"How is he?"

Rey spoke slowly for him to understand, "Fine for now. His mother is here."

Luke's brows furrowed as he took in her words, "That's impossible, she's in Alabama, it would take her at least another day—"

"Luke," she appeared in the doorway, still looking very much confused, and Mr. Walker's eyes widened.

He swung out of bed and walked up to his sister to envelop her in an embrace, "Leia, how did you get here so quickly?"

Rey watched their exchange very closely. Leia knew sign language too.

"I was in West Virginia with Han. I got his telegram."

Luke looked over her shoulder to see the hallway empty, "Where is Han?"

Leia's face crumpled, but she quickly recovered as best she could, "I can't lose them both Luke."

Luke grabbed her shoulders gently as Rey stood awkwardly to the side trying not to look like she was listening, "Leia, what's happened?"

"The mine collapsed. They're trying to dig them out. They don't know who's survived and who hasn't. Then I got your telegram and—"

The woman collapsed into her brother's arms in a fitful state mumbling repeatedly, "I can't lose them both, I can't lose them both, I can't..."


	13. Fathers and Sons

Rey liked Leia very much. She was strong in the face of tragedy and retained elegance over her grief. Even though it was her son who was fighting off death, sometimes she would comfort Rey when she became overwhelmed. It was like having a real mother, and she finally understood why Ben was so sad all the time without her.

Despite being the same age as Luke, Rey had discovered, she refused to hide from the fever. Maz's constant presence was no longer absolutely necessary because it seemed that Leia was just as formidable a nurse. Rey remembered how Ben had told her once that her job consisted of caring for an old woman in Alabama.

Leia seemed to have a calming effect on her son as well, to little surprise. Each time the fever spiked and sent him jerking and twisting, his mother's presence soothed him enough to go back into rest. It was somewhat of a surprise, however, that Rey had nearly the same effect on him. When she pressed his palm to her cheek and whispered soothing words to him, and he sighed and stilled, Leia had given her such a look of incredulity that Rey had blushed in every part of her face.

"What are you to my son," Leia had asked mostly innocently when it was just the two of them and a sleeping Ben at two in the morning.

Rey avoided her gaze by smoothing a lock of Ben's hair from his face as she replied, "He’s my best friend. My only friend, really.”

Leia’s gaze was morose but she smiled nonetheless as she gazed at her only child, “I’m glad he has a friend. He’s always been so lonely. My correspondence with my brother has always confirmed it, but I suppose I hadn’t had time for letters recently and I somehow missed out on you. Ben won’t talk to me anymore.”

Rey looked at her hands thoughtfully for a moment before hesitantly speaking, “If I may—I think he’s angry.”

The older woman looked at her with wide eyes, “Why is that? I thought he understood that this was the best situation for him?”

Rey sighed and lazily took Ben’s clammy hand and smoothed her thumb in soothing circles over top of it, “I think he does understand that, but he still misses his father and mother as any,” she took a deep breath and pushed away her own thoughts of a couple that may have shared her brown hair and hazel eyes, “as any child would. Maybe that’s what makes him angry. Maybe it’s that he knows he shouldn’t miss you because of what you’ve offered him instead, but he still does.”

Leia’s voice was very small, “You say that he also misses...his father?”

Rey nodded emphatically, “I think very much. I don’t believe that his father writes him very often and that’s what makes him the most upset because he wants to hear from him,” she looked around the room suddenly at all the balled up paper crumpled into balls that had been shoved into corners to make room for the scuffling nurses, “and he was writing him a letter to explain something like that to him, and Luke was going to give him money to put inside the letter so that his father would be able to write a real letter back instead of just a telegram.”

“Oh,” Leia breathed out in almost a whisper, “I’m just surprised.”

Rey cocked her head to the side in confusion, “Why? Don’t all sons love their fathers? I wouldn’t know anything about how family works because I’m an orphan as you know, but I always thought that fathers and sons were these sacred connections.”

“Han and Ben don’t really get along. Ben idolized him as a smaller child, but then he got a little older and didn’t enjoy the things that Han wanted him to, and Han didn’t know how to do anything else really but fix cars and give him a pat on the shoulder if he helped him. Then—I don’t mind you knowing—he got arrested for the moonshining and lost the car shop. I suppose Ben blamed him for our loss of fortune. Our home has always been tense with both of their bad tempers. They would yell back and forth at each other, and if Han pushed him back with a finger then Ben would shove him with both hands. He’s yelled that he hated his father for so long that I guess I just thought it was true.”

Rey looked down at the peaceful Ben and remembered all the small, encouraging smiles he would give her from his seat in the parlor, all the drawings of her that made her feel admirable, all the times he made her take more food because he always worried she wasn’t getting enough, the sweet blush he had had when he first told her that he wanted to be her friend, and generally all the memories of him that didn’t make him seem like the kind of boy to hate his father. She stood up and walked around the room to collect the balled up papers as she could feel Leia watching her with a fascinated silence. The papers were not too tightly crumpled for Rey to be able to unravel them and smooth them back out on her leg. When she returned with a wrinkled stack of papers, Leia’s eyes were wide and perhaps even a bit watery.

“Are—are those the letters? To Han?”

Rey nodded and held them out to her, “I don’t know if Ben would appreciate me giving these to you to read, but he’s certainly in no state to tell me no.”

Rey had already read all the drafts of letters. Some of them were angry and berated his father for abandoning him with a man he didn’t even know very well without any decent form of communication with him. Some of them were sorrowful and expressed how deep his hurt went at being ignored for most of the time he’d been sent away and now that Rey had a backstory to go with it, Rey suspected it may have hinted at longer than just his stay at his uncle’s. Some were apologetic, saying that he was sorry for everything he’d ever done to make his father truly not care about him anymore. All of them made his overworked mother cry in earnest.

Rey stood and without thinking about it, enveloped the smaller woman into a comforting embrace just as the woman had done for her at countless dire hours. When Leia returned her embrace with shuddering sobs that must have hurt, Rey decided that she could love this woman. She had only stayed for a couple of days, but Rey had grown very attached to her in that time. To see her hurting made Rey feel as if she was hurting too. When the tears subsided, both women laid their heads down at the side of the bed and fell asleep.

When both of them awoke, Ben had not made much change, and still he rested. Luke walked in and smiled in greeting, despite knowing he wasn’t supposed to be in the room. In his hand, he brandished two letters addressed to his sister. His eyes rested on Ben, and Rey could see the concern flash over them and suddenly felt guilty that he too was not allowed to care for him.

Leia stretched and Rey winced at the sound of old bones creaking in protest at bending over a bed. She silently took her letters and took Luke’s hand, squeezed it once, dropped it, and sent him back on his way. Without much more than a wide-eyed pause at the sender, Leia tore open the first letter.

Rey waited with baited breath as she carefully watched the expressions that crossed Leia’s face before she turned to her and explained with hesitant happiness, “One of the miners’ wives. She told me she talked to Han and told him where we were. He’s _alive_.”

Rey smiled and gave into another hug for the kind woman, “That’s excellent news. What about the second letter?”

Upon opening it, Rey’s smile faded as Leia’s did, then Leia let the letter drop with trembling hands, “Another of the wives. She says she saw him climb out of the mine, but that he went to the hospital and—and—didn’t—he didn’t _come back out_.”

Rey had no words to give as Leia clutched at her shoulders and lost her breath to her emotions, “Oh, Rey. What will I tell him—what can I tell Ben if he ever wakes? What if he doesn’t wake? Then I’ll have lost everything. I cannot. I _cannot_.”

At that, the door to the house swung open and heavy boots thudded across the floor. They were decidedly neither Maz nor Luke’s footsteps and both women became alert. The footsteps got closer and the door to Ben’s room slowly careened open as if just by a gentle push. Rey gasped when she saw the figure before them. He looked like a monster. A tall man—not as tall as Ben, but taller than Luke for sure—with broad shoulders that seemed used to labor. The man took heaving, menacing breaths that bordered into wheezing and he was covered in a black film as if he had just walked through the fires of Hell.

Rey froze in terror before Leia jumped from her seat and slapped the man. She grabbed a hold of his collar and jerked his head down to meet her at her level. Rey did not believe that Leia was capable of being so angry, and she wondered if perhaps the temper that Leia had hinted at the night before had not been inherited by her rather than Ben’s father.

“How _dare_ you walk into this house like you have after what you’ve done to my nerves, you selfish bastard! How _dare_ you take that job after I explicitly forbade you from it! How _dare_ you make me think you were dead!”

The man put two black-soiled hands on her shoulders and smiled a white smile that seemed to shine in comparison to the blackness that covered his face, “I missed you too.”

As if Rey could not be more confused, Leia yanked on his collar until the two of their mouths met in a passionate kiss. Rey felt uncomfortable up until the moment she realized that this must have been Han Solo, Ben’s father, who was supposedly dead. Her confusion was not alleviated.

When Leia pulled back, she huffed, “You taste like soot, and you look awful. Didn’t you take a bath when you crawled out of those godforsaken mines?”

“I didn’t have any time. I had to get to my brother-in-law’s house and someone stole my car.”

“How did you get here then?”

“The train.”

“With what money?”

“No money necessary if you’re a piece of the cargo.”

Leia’s tone was vaguely disappointed but not really surprised, “Han, tell me you didn’t jump onto a train.”

“I have a swollen ankle to prove it.”

“Go take a bath, you scoundrel.”

The man’s confident tone faded away, “Leia, I just—can I see him? Has he woken up yet?”

Leia sighed, “He’s not been awake for several days now.”

His shoulders fell, “So it’s pretty bad then.”

She nodded.

“Can I see him,” he repeated.

“No, you can’t see him covered in coal dust. You have to clean up first.”

The confidence returned just slightly to his voice, “Well maybe you could join me then?”

He got slapped for his efforts, “Han!”

He shrugged, “No, but really. I met a doctor briefly and he told me I had _some bruising on my ribs_ or something like that, then I really did twist my ankle getting off of that train. I might actually need you.”

Leia looked back at Rey, seemingly realizing she was still there and blushed, “You’ll call for me if anything changes?”

Rey smiled and nodded shyly.

As husband and wife walked down the hallway, Rey could hear him ask, “Who the hell is that?”

She laughed to herself and sighed in relief that at least one half of the kind, older woman’s troubles was resolved. Looking at Ben, she smiled and kissed his forehead.

She murmured into his ear, “Your father came back for you. I hope it will make you happy. You have to wake up first though.”


	14. Reconcile

Rey liked Han too. Once he was cleaned up, he wasn't a monster at all. He was a bit scruffy in the face and still smelled a bit like coal, but he had a smirk that his wife simultaneously loathed and adored against all odds. When he talked to Rey, he called her 'kid' quite often, but he never talked to her like she was less than him. His eyes were always tired and restless at the same time, and she found a somewhat kindred spirit in him. Tired from everything that life brings them, but an insurmountable amount of life roiling fervently within them despite everything. Even though everyone was tense with what the illness had in store for Ben, Han brought a certain light to the house with quick, dry wit.

Rey also liked that his hard and arrogant demeanor always seemed to soften when he talked to his son. He talked to a resting Ben much the same way that he talked to her. Ben was 'kid' just like her, and Han was fond of teasing him while he slept. Rey mused that maybe all Ben needed was to be goaded out of sleep. However, Ben always seemed more restless around his father.

When he'd first come to see his son, he'd smoothed back the hair from his forehead and teased lightly that, "Maybe you wouldn't be burnin' up so bad if you just cut your hair."

Ben had moaned in pain and sloshed his head sleepily from side to side, and Han had jerked his hand back as if he'd been burned. Rey didn't miss the look of hurt that flashed across the old man's face. He noticed her staring and shrugged.

"Never did have a nice effect on him anyway," he muttered.

Every time his father was around, Ben was always visibly perturbed. Han would always sit back silently and mumble to himself. Leia looked sad to watch them together. Then Leia had let Han read the letters, and Rey explained to the both of them all that she had noticed from him and what he had told her about his parents. After that, Han refused to sit back when Ben was bothered by him. He would whisper things that, to Rey, sounded oddly soft coming from him with echoing words of 'sorry' and 'I didn't mean to' and 'lousy father'.

A day into his father's stay, Ben was roused, if only slightly. Han had just finished patting his son's cheek affectionately, while delivering a cheerful story of 'the one and only time your mother has ever admitted that she was wrong.' As usual, Ben had tossed back and forth in the presence of his father.

Then he mumbled something and Han and Leia locked eyes before turning their full attentions back on Ben.

"Dad."

Han sucked in a breath and Rey could see how unaccustomed the man was to receiving any sort of attention from his son that wasn't negative, "Yeah, kid, I'm here."

To their astonishment, he opened his eyes, just marginally, and looked at his father, "You're not here."

Han took Ben's hand and nodded, "I am. I'm here."

Ben blinked languidly, and Rey could see the befuddling cloud over his eyes, "You can't be. You're never here."

Leia gasped from her seat across from him, but Ben didn't break his eye contact with Han as Han reassured him that he was, in fact, right there with him.

Ben closed his eyes sleepily but continued to speak, "Even if you are here, you'll just leave."

Han shook his head, "Not this time, kid. I'll make a deal with you. I'm not gonna' leave you, so long as you don't leave me."

Rey blinked back several tears as she watched Ben nod almost imperceptibly. His head sloshed to the side, and he opened his eyes to her.

" _Rey_."

She scooted her chair closer and put a hand on his knee, "Ben?"

He smiled a tentative smile, "I'm glad I got to see you again."

Lead filled Rey's veins and her heart hammered against its cage, "You can see me whenever you like if you'll just get better."

He frowned and closed his eyes, "I don't want to."

She cocked her head to the side in curiosity, "You don't want to see me again or you don't want to get better?"

Ben's eyes stayed shut as he mumbled, "I like dying. It makes people miss me more."

Rey sat back and almost chuckled at his morose reasoning, but she thought better of it when she saw Leia's eyes shimmer with hurt.

His mother tenderly pushed his hair back and whispered, "Don't say things like that, darling. You aren't dying, you're just sick and—"

His father had a rather different and much less gentle approach, "Kid, if you want it to be like that then—hell—I _don't_ miss you. I don't miss you picking fights with me. I don't miss you telling me how worthless I am—which is true, but I don't have to be told by my own son. I don't miss you pushing me around just because you're mad. You exhaust me, and I don’t miss you."

Leia turned to her husband with righteous fury flaming in her eyes, but rather than shrinking back, Han shrugged and gestured to keep watching Ben. At Han's declaration he had gone very still, and everyone wondered if he had just gone back to sleep. Then he slowly opened his eyes back up and seemed to be, in fact, actually awake. Rey could see that the fever cloud over his eyes was no longer present, and when he tried to sit up, she broke out into a smile that contradicted the deep frown on his face.

Rey could tell how Leia was trying to hold herself from smothering Ben by the twitch in her fingers, though she gasped, and tears were visible in her eyes, "Oh, Ben!"

However, Ben only had eyes for his father, who stared back at him with an equally unreadable expression. He attempted several times to set himself up on his own so that he could look at Han on the same level, but his body was too weak to support him. When Leia tried to prop him on pillows, he swatted her hands away, and Rey's joyful appearance faded at the barely concealed hurt that flashed in the older and kind woman's eyes.

Not for the first time, Rey felt like an intruder in the Solo family as Leia trembled with the ache to hold her sick child but not having the permission to do so, as Han stared down his son in what seemed to be a silent reprimand, and as hot, angry tears spilled down Ben's face. _Luke should be here, not me_ , Rey thought, and she had half a mind to excuse herself and pull him into the room. She had every intention of following through with that way of thinking, but she found herself entranced by the tears on her friend's face and unable to leave him when she did not know what he was going to say.

Finally, Ben spoke in a fragile, wavering voice to his father, "If you hate me so much then why did you bother coming all the way here?"

In an unexpected move, Han gave a soft, lopsided grin and—ignoring Ben's profuse flinching—wiped the tears off the left side of his son's face, "Well, to tell you the truth, kid, I got caught in a mine collapse, and when I came out, I heard my son—who I don't hate and actually missed quite more than I bargained for—was awful sick and that my wife had to go to him in case the worst happened. She stole my car, so I hopped on a train and hopped off here after actually crawling out of a mine because I figured God was trying to tell me something."

Ben's breath hitched, and his tears continued to flow, and he blubbered out his response, "W—What?"

Han's voice was softer than Rey—or even Leia, it seemed from the shocked expression on her face—thought him to be capable of, "That I needed to be with my son.”

Rey looked to her friend, who was looking wildly around at the staring faces around him as if to catch on to some joke that he had missed out on. When he continued to speak, he seemed to return back to his former state of not-quite-thereness and asked his father every question he had ever had for him between painful, choking sobs. During which, his mother cried freely and silently, managing to grip onto his hand without protest given the return of his state of feverish behavior. Rey felt like a stranger again.

"Then why did you say all those things? Why didn't you tell me goodbye when you left me here? Why do you always leave me? Why don't you ever write to me? Why don't you ever tell me that you're proud of me? Why—”

Father interrupted son with a forceful embrace, giving Ben his father’s shirt to cling to like a child. Han pet his long, unruly hair, and while Rey was quite sure that Han was the type of man to never cry in front of anyone, he seemed suspiciously close in that moment. She would never mention it, of course, to him or anyone.

_I’m not even supposed to be here to see this anyway. I’m not a part of this family no matter how much I wish I were. I’ll never have a family. Not like this._

As she watched Han pet his son’s hair despite, as Rey had learned, disapproving of the length and as she listened to him tell his son all about his failures as a father and how he had thought Ben would be better off without him around all the time, Rey never felt so lonely. Despite aching for a family all her life and seeing now from the inside of a home how dysfunctional family can be, she had never ached more for one than in that moment.

She wanted a mother like Leia to brush her hair and give her direction for when she felt aimless (which is a feeling that never left Rey from the first time she wandered up and down the rafters of the train station). Rey wanted a father like Han, who was more like a fellow adolescent than a real adult, to teach her how to fix a car and have a secret language between them where an infuriating tease always meant pride since he never was good with words and sentiment. She also wanted a father like Luke, and Rey felt stupid for the conflict over it since it would never matter because she never would have that anyway. Even still, she wanted the quiet peace that comes from just being around him, which is something that Rey can never have while she’s on her own.

Rey wanted everything from these people, but circumstances had only gifted her to look through a window so that she could see everything she could never have. She wanted to cry at this grand realization, but this wasn’t the place. Not with a family gathered around a sickbed crying for an entirely different reason, not when her crying could be mistaken for their’s, and she would have no business sharing those tears with them. Rey resolved to get Luke, bring him to his family where he belongs, and go home to where she belonged and always would belong.

A small piece of her held out hope that someone would notice her leaving the house, but after she notified Luke of the change in his nephew, he nearly ran on his weakened legs to that room where she could still hear the commotion of a family reconciling. She did not return to the room, she had nothing of hers to gather in the house, so she left quietly and vowed never to be intrusive and selfish again and never to come back.


	15. Well of Neglect, Famine of Affection

Rey did not go outside for two days. She could not bring herself to. It would have been pointless. There had been a time three months before when the point of leaving her sad excuse for a room was to beg for change to buy food and to get water and to search with hopeful eyes for her parents. However, all those necessities were provided the previous three months with real companionship and something resembling a family to add to the freely given fruits and breads and cheeses and teas and jams and everything Rey only dreamt of tasting. A day later and Rey had given up everything. What was the point of leaving if it was not to laugh with her dear friend and his uncle and to play the piano? There wasn't one.

 

She was not ready to give up entirely. One day, she would leave and return to what was always supposed to be her lot in life. She just needed to get back there. Something in her had been spoiled, and she wasn't desperate enough yet to settle for stale, pity bread and water from the train station bathroom. Even her room had lost its former magic. Once it was a haven to her, a place that saved her from the horrid orphanage. Now, she recognized it for what it was.

 

It was a tragedy. All her room represented was the pitiful state of her life. It was the abandonment from her parents. It was the failure of her country's government to support pitiful children like her. It was her loneliness, her despair, her cage. Rey felt sick to sleep there. What choice did she have though?

 

For the first time in two days, her thoughts were allowed to drift to Ben. She wondered what he would think of her room. Would he find it fascinating like she did before he came into her life? Or would he find it exactly how she feels about it now that he isn't in her life any longer? Rey hoped it would be the former, but he would probably find it the latter.

 

After all, he has never known the orphanage, starvation, thirst, the feeling of never being clean, and the soreness that comes from sleeping on boards. Even when he had neared the precipice of poverty, he had been shipped to his uncle where he has only known luxury. He would pity her, and that made Rey angry but only for the sake that anger made the pain of missing him a little bit less.

 

The more Rey thought about it, the more angry she became. How dare he disenchant her from her life like he has.How dare he give her nice food and let her drink different teas and take care of her while she was sick and let her sleep in his bed. It wasn't fair. How could she possibly go back. How terrible it was that he was so nice to her.

 

She became irate that he had ever smiled at her or said he would be her friend or held her hand or drew pictures of her when she wasn't looking. Shouldn't he have known that he would be one of the only people to do such things and that everything goes wrong for Rey and when he inevitably isn't in her life that those infuriating actions would make missing him so much more excruciating?

 

Then she wasn't angry with him anymore because he was just being nice to her, and she cried and cried and cried. What was she supposed to do? Rey couldn't return to the Walker house because she had been selfish and had tried to siphon the feeling of love from another family that she had no right to try and take from. Han and Leia must have thought her so odd to be sitting in that room with them when she had no business to be watching anything happen at all. She couldn't return to the orphanage because it meant misery, and once they figured out that she had run away (they hadn't really looked for her in the years that followed), they would probably punish her for the trouble she would cause in coming back.

 

There were the factories, but the thought of joining the other children there made Rey sick. It would only be a matter of time there before she would lose a limb or inhale so much cotton that she would suffocate. It was just another orphanage, but with a little bit of money thrown in the mix and much more dangerous.

 

After a week, the pain in Rey's stomach was something she could not ignore, and she made her decision. She went down the ladder and begged for spare change like she was always meant to do.

 

It was a month before she saw him again. He didn't see her and neither did his mother. She made herself look very scarce, but she couldn't find it possible to leave the station when he was so near. He relied on his mother's arm to stand, as far as Rey could see. The illness must have run its course a little later than when she had left and must have left him weakened and wobbly. She noticed with a wince too that he looked much thinner than last she saw him.

 

There was a large pole in the middle of the station where people tacked all numbers of papers onto. Police put wanted posters there, children put descriptions of missing pets there, businesses put advertisements there, and now Ben was putting something there too. Rey watched him hang a picture from afar and then he looked at it for a very long time as if it was the first time he had seen it. She was itching to know what it was and to know what he was looking for, but she refused to reveal herself. Most likely, after leaving him while he was sick, he probably wouldn't even wish to see her again. Somehow that made her want to run out to him even more.

 

She chastised herself for being selfish again. He came with his mother whom he never had such an opportunity to see this often. It would be very selfish of her to taint his precious time spent with his mother with a dirty, underfed urchin who had no mother of her own.

 

Rey tried to imagine how he would react if he had seen her. Would his face brighten upon seeing her, and would he admonish her for leaving him because he missed her as much as she missed him?Or would he scowl and cast her aside without a single word or goodbye? The fear of not knowing which outcome would be was enough for Rey to continue to plant herself firmly where she was without any further conflict.

 

She began sniffling like a small child, and she watched his mother put a hand on his shoulder and lead him away through blurry vision. Her tears got her several coins in her cap from passing strangers who thought she cried for hunger. She did not.

 

Once she was sure that they both were gone, she stifled her tears and gathered herself up enough to make her way to the picture he had hung up. What she saw was not what she expected in the least. Ben had hung up his very own art, or at least, a copy of it, and it was of her. She knew exactly which picture it was because she had so carefully studied all of them, and around it there were words like, "Missing," and, "Have you seen her," and, "She goes by Rey." A hand flew up to her mouth in shock and to stop an escaping cry.

 

With shaking hands, she unpinned the picture from the pole and marveled at the new discovery. Was she wanted after all? Was she mistaken in thinking she had only interrupted Ben's life? She was "missing," which meant that someone missed her. She thought about how difficult it was for Ben to show her his art even after seeing her every day for weeks, and he still never showed her all of it. Now, he had gotten his art printed to scatter around for any number of people to see so that he could find her. Rey had to sit down to ponder the weight of it all.

 

She turned the paper over where she was surprised once again to find a small note squeezed into the bottom corner.

 

_If you're reading this Rey, please come back to us. I don't know why you left and I won't ask you if you don't want me to. I miss you._

 

As she read the note over and over again, she failed to realize that the other side's picture was displayed quite literally under her nose where anyone could see that it was she in the picture. A pair of shiny, black boots came into her view, and she slowly sized up the man in front of her. He seemed to be a man of wealth, donning a shirt of clearly fine material and a real cape which made him look like someone of authority.

 

While she was busy gaping and trying to gauge what a man such as he was approaching her for, he snatched the paper from her hands before she could react. His smile was arrogant, and Rey wanted to be angry, but something in his eyes when he squatted down to meet her gaze made her want to trust him. For an agonizing second, he held the poster up next to her face and assessed the likeness right up until she ripped it back from his hands and folded it carefully and neatly to place in her trouser pocket.

 

There was no judgement in his face or his flashy, white smile he gave her, "Run away from your family did you, miss?"

 

Rey grumbled and ignored the pain in her chest, "I don't have a family, sir."

 

"Are you sure about that?"

 

"Yes," Rey nearly hissed from her clenched teeth.

 

The man shrugged and stood back up to his full height, "Well, that's your business I suppose. Do me a favor though? Wherever you end up running off to, send whoever they are a postcard when you get there. They seem to miss you an awful lot."

 

Before she could argue, he was leaving.

 

As if she could ever have the money to leave, let alone buy and mail anything. Rey tossed the idea with a morbid chuckle.

 

She picked herself up and tried not to think about the temptation to run back to the Walker house or how easy it was for a mere stranger to believe that she even had a family in the people who lived there. The universe seemed to be out to get her on that particular day because as she trying so very hard not to think, she bumped into someone she would much rather have avoided.

 

An ever present smirk turned into disbelief, “Rey? Kid, how are ya? We’ve been looking all over for you!”

 

Han Solo held her by her shoulders as she contemplated the gravity of her bad luck, “We?”

 

He patted her head and smiled, “Well, mainly Ben. Soon as he came to about two weeks ago and realized you’d run off and weren’t coming back, he started making posters and such. I think Luke might’ve been out looking too—you know how he likes his walks—they kinda got a little longer than usual.”

 

Rey had never felt more confused in her life. She fell quiet and Han continued.

 

“You’d apparently said you’d lived in some type of yellow house with white shutters and Ben had me drive him up every street to look for it. There were a couple like it, but none of them seemed to be yours.”

 

Han narrowed his eyes and let that sink in, and Rey swallowed a guilty lump in her throat. She hadn’t ever thought that someone would try so hard to find her. She hadn’t thought that any of the lies she’d spouted to cover the truth would mean anything to Ben. A traitorous tear slipped down her cheek, and Han smiled knowingly and put a hand on her shoulder.

 

His voice was close to a whisper when he spoke, “Kid, I grew up on the streets too, you don’t have to hide that from me. I know what it’s like to not want anyone to know about it, but I think if you came back and told the truth, you might have a home waiting for you. If that’s what you want, you can come back with me, and I’ll help you. If not, then this can stay between us, and I never saw you at the station.”

 

Rey blinked profusely, “H-how long have you known that I—”

 

“Since I met you, kid.”

 

She looked around and tried to think of things to prolong her decision, “What were you doing here?”

 

“I was going to catch a train back to the mines.”

 

“Y-you’re leaving? After all of—”

 

“No, I promised him I wouldn’t. Truth is, I left my dog there, and I’d hate myself if I didn’t go back and get him.”

 

“Don’t you have a car?”

 

Han seemed to know she was stalling, but he generously played along nonetheless, “Ben’s still looking for you.”

 

Which brought her right back to where there was a big, open-ended question looming over her head. Was it suddenly more selfish to stay away and make him keep searching for her, only to never succeed? She’d had a month to tell herself the opposite. It made her head hurt tremendously.


	16. Don’t Leave, Please Stay

Vomit. That's what Rey felt like she was about to do. She had the very same swirling, nauseating feeling in the pit of her stomach from when she had fallen wildly ill. Han had a hand on the door handle and a hand on her shoulder as his face morphed into concern at the sight of her immobile and nearly green in the face. Her knees were locked, and she swayed a little bit even when the older man moved his other arm to her other shoulder to bolster her.

 

The truth was, how did Han really know how his son was feeling? Rey had been foolish in thinking she knew Ben's mind more than he did, but how did Han really know that Ben missed her despite her glaring mistake? She felt awful to think it, but she couldn't help but feel that even though he was making his best efforts, Han still had a long road ahead of him where his son's emotions were concerned. It could just be that Ben missed her but never wanted to see her again because of the hurt she had caused him.

 

Han had worked miracles to get her to go to the Walker house in the first place, but she feared all his heartfelt pleas had run out. He wasn't naturally sentimental, so it came to little shock for Rey when his "consoling" words came out with his usual awkwardness.

 

"Hey, uh, kid. It'll be okay. I mean, you're already here right? What could happen?"

 

Rey couldn't help the glare she gave him because, of course, she was thinking exactly of all the scenarios that could happen. Han shrugged and tried a new tactic.

 

"Alright, so what's got you spooked now?"

 

Rey shuddered and closed her eyes, whispering, "I-I panicked and left him while he was sick, and I was the one who got him that way. He should hate me."

 

Han looked bewildered, "But he doesn't, so what's the matter?"

 

"What if he changes his mind? I can't—"

 

What she meant to say was that she couldn't be unwanted again. However, she was cut off by the sound of the piano, and she went to the window to watch Luke play like she used to before she became familiar with the house and the two who lived there. Han watched her walk away with a curious tilt in his head. Rey's eyes widened in surprise when she saw that the person at the piano was not Luke but Ben.

 

She gave herself one moment to be shocked before ducking into the brush to peek above the windowsill and speculate without being noticed. With a blush, she took in a sight she had never seen before. She'd thought it before, but the word _beautiful_ clutched at her soul as she watched him with rapt attention. Though she had thought it before, she had never really thought so much into depth on it.

 

His black curls continued to fall into his face, and she surprised herself by longing to be there with him and brush them from his eyes so that his view of the lines and keys would be unhindered. His eyes were so focused and oddly ancient, and she felt molten at the sight of their sheer intensity, and somehow, the memory of the affectionate, almost honey-colored lightness of them when he smiled made her melt even more. The way he threw himself into the simple act of moving—no— _gliding_ his fingers across the keys made her heart stutter. The song choice as well, she noticed, was just so very much like him.

 

Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude" with its tremulous bursts of low notes before sharply changing to higher notes that gave the listener an emotional whiplash was just like Ben. It almost made Rey laugh. All of his mood swings, the somber days where he would miss his mother and father before he would remember himself and her presence and smile brightly and cajole her into laughter. Dark notes and light notes. The rain could be stormy and mournful yet it could be music too, lilting and joyful. Nothing made her miss him more.

 

"He started doing that soon as he got up and found out you'd gone missing. Every day," Han gave a small chuckle and shook his head, "that kid. I don't know where he got this little romantic streak from, but I can tell you it wasn't from me. Leia swears it wasn't her either but I think she's too proud."

 

_Romantic streak,_ Rey flushed and stared at Han looking very much scandalized as he spared several more chuckles at her expense.

 

He put his hands up in surrender, "Oh please, you can't tell me you didn't know, right? I mean here he is, sitting there playing because he's sad you left, and he drew pictures of you, and I saw the way he looked at you when he woke up that time."

 

Rey shook her head and mumbled a protest before turning to watch Leia stand in the parlor entrance beaming at her son with pride. He was quite good, Rey had to admit, he just seemed to be good at everything. Like the day she found out about his art, she was renewed with the feeling of awe that she had met someone like him with real talent, and she felt thankfulness that he had ever considered her a friend. Guilt stung sharp.

 

Uncharacteristically of him—simply because of his characteristic perfectionism—he missed a note, and he winced before missing yet another one. Leia frowned, seeming to be thinking the same thing Rey was. Two more incorrect notes flew by before his hands landed hard on the keys, and he stopped altogether. Rey had seen Ben cry before, rarely, but she'd been a witness to the violent sobs that seemed to consume his lanky frame as he would weep with fury in his heart. This was so much different. He merely stopped to hang his head, the only tell being the slight tremors in his shoulders. Leia gasped immediately and went to comfort him.

 

His mother cradled his head to her heart and ran her fingers through his hair, and Han crouched beside her, wincing as his old knees protested,"What are you afraid of again?"

 

"I don't want to be a burden," she sighed and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

 

He smiled, but it wasn't his usual smirk, it was full of compassion, "Kids aren't burdens."

 

She sniffled and held herself as she turned to continue watching the scene unfold. Han squeezed her shoulder and headed back inside.

 

Ben gave a big, shuddering sigh, and his mother used her sleeve to wipe up his tears and kissed him on the forehead. Words could not express how happy it made him that his mother was finally back in his life to do such a little thing as comfort him when he cried. However, he wasn't truly happy because somehow along the way of getting his parents back, he lost his only friend, and he couldn't think of why. Leia left him to his thoughts, which he was so completely grateful for.

 

He went to sit on his window seat, curling with his knees hugged to his chest as he rested his chin atop them. There was only one thing to think about for him. What had he done wrong somehow while he was lost to the fever? His parents and Luke could not account for it, in fact, Luke had insisted  that the last time he saw her—when he first awoke—she had been beaming. Han and Leia had only good things to say about her and her optimism and her helpfulness and her desire to be there for him. Ben couldn't help but wonder if he'd said something foolish in his sleep that offended her or frightened her. He was desperate to find her and remedy whatever it was.

 

Just then, one of the bushes beneath his very nose rustled, and he caught a flash of brown out of the corner of his eye. His breath caught in his throat, and he stood quickly. The idea occurred to him that _if this was her_ she had been hiding in the bushes for a reason. She still didn't want him to see her. Ben nodded to himself and slowly extricated himself from the room. He padded quietly down the hall and made his way outside. His legs were still wobbly from the illness and he had to lean on the walls and the rails for support. His heart soared to see her glued to the window. Softly, he walked through the grass without a handhold to keep himself steady until there were only several yards separating them.

 

"Rey," he called to her, the timber of his voice softened in an attempt not frighten her.

 

He seemed to have failed because her head whipped around so viciously that he thought it would spin off her shoulders. Rey's eyes were wide and her chest rose and fell frantically like an animal caught in a cage. Ben's heart fell at the sight of her so terrified to be seeing him again. What happened? When did he become such a fearsome thing to her? He swayed on his feet where he stood, both of them staring at one another.

 

Then she must have panicked. That was the only way Ben could conceive the way that Rey bolted away from him and shot down the street. It suddenly felt like Ben's _whole life_ depended on not letting her get away, and before he could think better of it, he was running too. His legs were weak but the stretch he felt in them was exhilarating after sitting around for so long as he raced down the street after her. She looked back at him running and she seemed to fly faster away.

 

Ugly desperation to not be left behind clawed its way up his throat which felt strangely tight as he pleaded with her, "Rey, please wait! Don't leave m—"

 

Whatever sad and yearning thing he had been about to say was cut short by his body betraying him. His legs gave up on him, crumpling beneath his heavy strides, and he gave the paved street a resounding smack. Everything was black for a moment, and he swore the thumping in his chest was a mere echo of her footsteps as she ran away from him. A metallic taste filled his mouth, and all he wanted to do was to curl up on the street and disappear into nothing. So, without cracking an eye, his right side curled in on itself, and he felt stormy tears roll down his cheeks. There was the vague notion that he was lying in the street where any car could be at, but he paid the thought no mind.

 

His chest ached, his throat was scratchy with painful tears that he wanted to suppress, and his whole head _really hurt_. Ben surmised that his chin must have busted, his lip must have been busted, he must have also bit the inside of his cheek on impact, and despite not wanting to be entirely too dramatic, his heart must be broken. Some part of him howled at the picture of her running from him with terrified eyes, and terrible words that he'd thought he had moved past and tucked away came swirling around his subconscious, pooling behind his eyelids and suffocating him as they burned up his lungs.

 

_Repulsive._ . . _Disgusting._ . . _Scary._ . .

 

_Alone. Alone. Alone._

 

He was too worked up that when fingertips lightly brushed against his shuddering shoulders, he gave a full-body flinch. There was a gasp somewhere above him, and it sounded familiar, but he refused to open his eyes and disappoint himself because he was tired of disappointments. Someone shushed him as he cried—not for the first time that day, and he wondered how he even retained the capacity to continue to cry—and someone pushed his hair away from his face where it had been sticking to the tears on his cheeks.

 

A voice above whispered to him, and he thought he felt rain on the side of his face, "Ben, I am so sorry. I—I keep leaving you and it _hurts_ you, and I am _sorry_."

 

His chest fluttered, and he could not stop himself from bolting upright and soaking up the sight of Rey crying over him with wide, unblinking eyes. Unable to suppress a wince at the rush of blood, he broke eye contact and tried to look her over. She wasn't hurt, he was happy to report, so he crossed it off of his mental checklist to discern why she hadn't come back. Seeing her really there in front of him and with worry in her gaze caused his chest to tighten and for one more great, hideous sob to be ripped from him. Embarrassment tinged his cheeks and his ears burned as they were wont to do whenever the slightest hint of shame sparked within him, but he could not hinder the watery, enormous, and likely unflattering smile that he gave her.

 

She laughed in spite of herself as she wiped away her tears, which he realized had not been rain on his face, with the back of her hand. With a tenderness he was stunned to possess, he wiped away a collection of tears on her face and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, all the while he had the same, blissful smile painted on his face. When he could no longer justify touching her face, he still didn't move his hands away.

 

She cradled his injured chin in one hand and swiped a pool of blood from the corner of his mouth with the other, admonishing him lightheartedly, "Oh, look at you. You're bleeding all over yourself and your silly, _pretty_ smile is opening the cut on your lip even more."

 

They both blushed at the sentiment expressed in her words, but neither of them ventured into speaking about it. He made circles on her cheekbones with his thumbs and attempted to reign in his wide grin.

 

Ben wasn't proud of the crack in his voice, but he refrained from blushing any more if that were even possible to achieve, "You came back?"

 

She nodded vigorously, "Of course, how could I possibly leave you on the street. I'm sorry I ran away at all."

 

He bowed his head underneath all the relief he felt. Her words had somewhat of a double meaning and they both knew it.

 

He sniffed and looked back up at her, "I'm sorry I frightened you. I don't want you to be scared of me."

 

Rey blinked at him because, really, how could she tell him that he was scary in such a different way, when there was no way to really make him understand without crushing his obviously bleeding heart. She just smiled and shook her head.

 

"You don't scare me, Ben" she murmured.

 

His face crumpled upon hearing her words and he surged forward to capture her in a bone-crushing embrace. She sighed and silently reveled in the feeling of his arms around her and the feeling of his heart beating so close to her own. Her traitorous emotions soared as she reluctantly took notice of how soft his hair was against her face and how nice he smelled and how solid his arms were.

 

_I am in so much trouble_ , Rey thought, but she couldn't find it in her to care.

 

All of a sudden, Ben pulled away from her, and she tried not to feel like a piece of her had been ripped off even as he had only moved to mere inches from her, and his hands still sat on her shoulders.

 

"Tell me what I did, Rey, please. I'm sorry for whatever it was and I'm sorry that I can't remember or understand what it was."

 

Before Rey could even think of forming a response some sort of realization crossed over his face, "The night before I was sick you were angry with me. You thought I was going to leave you, and I was so terrible to you."

 

He waited for her to understand, to nod  or remember and reject him. She blinked. Wasn't that almost exactly it though? Did it not all come down to the fear that Ben's parents would show up and take him away, and she would never see him again?

 

In a mirror of what he had done to her, she tucked an errant curl behind his endearingly large ear, "No, Ben, you didn't do anything wrong. I was afraid and that was not your fault. Please don't be so quick to think the worst of yourself. I shouldn't have left you, least of all while you were ill, and especially not when I was the one who gave you the fever. I'm so sorry."

 

He looked like he would start crying again, but he kept it at bay, "Then why did you leave? What were you afraid of? Where did you go? I looked at every single house that you described was yours, and you were never there."

 

She trembled like a leaf, and she must have looked so terrified to him that he took pity on her and kissed her forehead, undoubtedly leaving a splotch of red behind, "Never mind. It isn't really my business. I should probably go get cleaned off and fixed, and I'm humiliatingly exhausted, but I don't want to leave you yet. Come with me?"

 

There was something in his voice that was earnest and longing and vulnerable that Rey had only the option of smiling and teasing him as she helped him stand, "Of course, you wouldn't be able to walk without me anyway."

 

He smiled again, now looking down at her, and Rey couldn't help but think that the cut on his lip and the scrape on his chin made him look roguishly handsome. She blushed and leaned against him, supporting his much longer and wobbly legs. A beat of silence filled the air as they made their way back.

 

Rey's voice was very small, "Ben, I'll tell you everything. I'll show you everything but tomorrow. For now...could I stay with you?"

 

He released a breath he hadn't realized he had held and nodded sweetly, pulling her closer into his side with the arm draped over her shoulder, "You can always stay with me, Rey."


	17. Affectionate

As Rey gently tugged Ben back to the Walker house, his mother and father were inside arguing like usual. Leia was worrying her hands together as Han smirked at her from where he was leaned against the wall, knowing more than his wife did for once and feeling rather good about it. Her eyes flickered out the window and around the room and out in the hallway.

 

"Han, he yelled, and I can't find him. What if he fell somewhere and hurt himself or what if someone took him—"

 

Han couldn't help but to snort in amusement, earning a glare from his small yet formidable partner, "He's fine. Trust me."

 

Leia's eyes narrowed suspiciously, "What do you mean?"

 

The man ran his knuckles under his chin, considering his words and how they'd be received, "I've done something."

 

Her hands went to her hips, and her eyes widened, " _What have you done, Han_?"

 

She looked dangerous, but Han wasn't intimidated, "I found that girl, Rey. His friend. She's a good kid, and her life isn't easy or what I think everyone thought it was. Anyway, I brought her back here. I guarantee Ben's yipping about seeing her again. If you can't find him and you can't find her then—well—we weren't born yesterday."

 

Leia shook her head seemingly mystified at him, and she took several steps towards him, his voice was slightly less sure than it had been before, "I mean, I know I did the right thing for the girl, but did I do the right thing for Ben? He's pretty attached to her and if she runs off again, it might do him more harm than good, and I don't think I ever really know what's good or wrong for the kid—"

 

His wife silenced him with a kiss, which was certainly much more desirable contact than the affectionate slap across his cheek that he was used to when he did something rash. Han smiled and pulled her closer, and Leia broke away to lay her head on his chest as she too smiled.

 

Her voice was soothing, "You did a good thing, Han. Even if she leaves again and it breaks Ben's heart, you'd still have done a good thing. I can't imagine what that poor girl has gone through. Each time I looked at her, I saw myself or Luke, but somehow, something sadder."

 

Han mumbled, "She's like me."

 

She pulled back to look at her husband's face, "What do you mean?"

 

He shrugged, "A street rat."

 

Her brow furrowed, "Han, you never told me you—where did you find her?"

 

With a reassuring smile he kissed his wife's head and pulled her back into his arms, "I ran away God knows when, and I lived in the city working for the crime bosses—don't look at me like that—it was better than getting my hand caught in a machine. She doesn't seem to be quite like that though. I think she lives in the train station, but I can't be sure. That's where I found her, and she didn't look like she was going anywhere."

 

"You two don't seem to be arguing so something truly amazing has happened," Luke leaned against the door to the parlor looking very much intrigued.

 

Han smiled as Leia went to tell him the news. Around the same time, Ben and Rey made their ways through the front door. Han and Leia heard the door shut, and Leia gave him the look that said she very much wanted to snoop. He shook his head and patted her shoulder.

 

Han pulled a notepad off a shelf and started writing to Luke, "Don't worry, I'll fill him in."

 

Leia walked through the hallway to see Rey looking much worse for wear than she had last seen her and her son's mouth and chin bloodied. She wasn't sure where to look or what to react to first. Despite the crimson stains on his face, Ben look happier than she'd seen him in a month, and despite how Rey seemed sunken in and more hollow and thin, she too seemed very happy.

 

"You two had better come to the kitchen then."

 

They followed her through the hallway, and when she pulled out chairs and ordered them to sit, they did. Ben and Rey watched as she flitted about the small room, filling a small bowl with water and a rag as well as unwrapping the days' leftover sandwiches from lunch and setting heaps of fruit onto a plate. At last she sat the heaping plate of food in front of Rey and the bowl of water in front of Ben, pulling out a chair for herself to sit beside him.

 

As she dipped the rag in the water and cleared the blood off of her son's skin, she tried to make casual conversation, "Rey, dear, it is so good to see you again. Will you be staying awhile? The sun is starting to set, and it will be dark soon, you're welcome to stay as long as you like. I could prepare a room for you?"

 

Ben answered for her, "She'll be staying," and Leia noticed that his hand had found its way into Rey's, and she smiled to herself.

 

_Not surprising, but an interesting development indeed._

 

At that moment, with Rey's mouth stuffed to the brim with food and Ben's head tipped back to give his mother access to his scraped chin, Luke walked into his kitchen. He paused, and Rey stopped chewing, and Ben's eyes skirted between his uncle and his friend.

 

Luke smiled at his pupil, "I'm glad you're back, Rey."

 

Rey was momentarily flustered at not being able to speak when she remembered she didn't have to when it came to Luke, so she let her hands speak for her, "I am too."

 

He nodded his head at his nephew and to Rey before shuffling back out. Leia stood and wiped her hands off on her apron.

 

"I'll just be upstairs fixing you up a room. Ben if you could keep holding that rag to your chin and Rey feel free to help yourself to anything here."

 

They both nodded as she walked away, and Rey gulped down her mouthful of food feeling rather stuffed and maybe nauseous were she to continue eating. Ben did as his mother bade him and held the rag loosely against his chin. Rey felt bold and ghosted her fingers across his knuckles before gently tugging the rag from his hand.

 

"Here, let me. It's my fault anyway," he tried to protest before she shushed him with the rag and went about her task.

 

Some of the blood had smeared under his eye where he had rubbed his tears away, so she softly scrubbed off the remnants of it. He smiled at her with his expressive, warm, brown eyes, and she shifted in her seat subtly trying to will away the fluttery feelings that it gave her in her belly.

 

"Rey," his voice was so low and so soft, and she nodded almost hypnotically, "what made you come back?"

 

Rey could see when his eyes went from their former peace to a small and panicked fear that he had asked for too much, and he pulled away from her much to her dismay, "I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that. I didn't mean to—I'm sorry I—"

 

She smiled and giggled slightly at how flustered he had become, and he stopped with a red tinge to his cheeks and ears. Rey found his concern for her emotional boundaries to be positively the most endearing thing that she had ever witnessed.

 

"It's alright, Ben, I don't mind answering."

 

She pulled out the poster he had hung up earlier that day with his mother from her pocket and unfolded it. His eyes widened in recognition. Rey looked down at it lovingly, being able to appreciate it much more when she wasn't cut off from everyone she cared for.

 

He sucked in a breath, "That's the one from the train station. That was this—you were there, did you see me?"

 

She nodded meekly, "I did, I'm sorry I didn't go to you—it's just," she sighed, "well, you know I don't have a real mother or father and seeing you with yours, I felt like I was intruding on something special or somewhere I didn't belong. I didn't go to you because you were with your mother and you hadn't seen her in so long and I felt as if I shouldn't interrupt your time with her. When you left I realized what you had done. Then your father found me."

 

His face was incredulous, "My—did he bring you back?"

 

Rey nodded again, more confidently this time, "He did. He reassured me that all my fears were unfounded, and that I would be welcome back, and he skipped his train to take me back here. Except then I panicked, and I saw you play the piano through the window—you really are amazing at everything—and then you'd scared me and I ran and you know the rest."

 

Ben was silent. It was perhaps the most thoughtful thing his father had done in his lifetime, least of all for him and most of all for Rey. His chest ached, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to thank his father and let him muss his hair affectionately though it normally irritated Ben for him to do so. He shook his head and smiled faintly.

 

"Oh, that's—I'm glad, Rey. Were you going somewhere? At the train station?"

 

The question brought less panic than Rey had expected it to, and she stood, running her fingers through his hair before kissing him on top of his head, "Tomorrow. You will know everything tomorrow."

 

Ben looked like he wanted to say something in response, something important, but his expression closed off once his mother's footsteps could be heard heading towards them from the hallway. Rey just smiled, putting an errant lock of hair back into place before creating the space that his mother would expect to see between the two of them. Leia gracefully strode in and stood just in the doorway. Her eyes were caught by the difference in food on Rey's plate from before she left, and she smiled ever so slightly, satisfied for the time being.

 

She addressed Rey so politely that Rey felt like she was some great lady, and momentarily, she fell into that same daydream she always had. Maybe her English accent really was sincerely English and she came from a line of dukes and earls, but she was stolen for ransom money and never returned. It was certainly the most exciting of daydreams she had. Unfortunately, she paid absolutely zero attention to Leia's words, leaving her to nod at her expectant gaze and stare quizzically at Ben when she left.

 

"You're looking at me funny," he said after a length of time.

 

"No I'm not," she replied defensively.

 

He nodded, "You are. I'm not sure why."

 

She crossed her arms and flushed, fairly embarrassed, "I didn't hear what your mother told me because I forgot to pay attention. I was waiting for you to step in."

 

He smirked, "And words wouldn't have been the slightest bit simpler?"

 

She reached across the space she'd provided between them and smacked the back of his head, less to harm and more to just annoy. He frowned good-naturedly and rubbed the back of his head. It hit her then that in that moment, they were normal again. She wasn't deathly ill and neither was he, and he wasn't crying about his parents because they were home, and she was sitting in his uncle's kitchen as if she'd never left, and finally, they could laugh at and tease one another without the underlying worry and agitation that had so often characterized them.

 

Then he was speaking, and she made more of an effort to listen, "In summary, everyone is going to sleep and mom made you a room upstairs."

 

She nodded and smiled, "Thank you."

 

He nodded, and she took in the way that his eyes drooped a little and how heavy his head appeared to be. She went to ask if he was tired too, but the point in asking seemed moot when he covered half his face with a hand and yawned quietly behind it.

 

She stood, and he blinked up at her, "What?"

 

She took an arm and helped pull him out of the wooden chair, "You look like you need rest. I'll help you to your room."

 

He frowned as he leaned against her, "No, I should be showing you to yours. You're a guest here."

 

She pulled on him with an arm around his waist, leaving his jelly-like legs with nothing to do but follow her down the hall to his room.

 

Rubbing his side comfortingly and—oddly—intimately, she beamed up at him and stated confidently, "Don't worry about all that. Besides I have absolutely no intention of leaving you."

 

Her double meaning hit her after the fact, not only did she mean she wouldn't be leaving him that night but also _ever_. When she shyly peeked up at him, he was studiously looking ahead and not at her, but it was the brightest smile she had seen on him yet. Rey's heart fluttered, and she tried to scold herself mentally to quiet down. It worked very little.

 

The fluttering only increased when they stood inside his room together for the first time when neither of them were sick and, in an unsettling addition, with the door closed. She realized that she was nervous and that he certainly was very nervous if his trembling hands as he pulled away from her was any tell, but she really had no earthly idea why. They had consciously shared a bed before, and she could give no cause as to why Ben avoided her gaze as he opened his wardrobe to pull out sleepwear.

 

He turned to her just slightly as he closed the doors, "I don't suppose you have anything to wear for sleeping."

 

She laughed slightly, "No."

 

He handed her his carefully folded night shirt, barely looking at her. She watched as he swayed on his feet without a crutch and eyes his sleep pants suspiciously.

 

"Do you need help with those?"

 

She didn't need to be more specific because he instantly knew what she was talking about. His ears peeking out from his hair turned bright red as well as his long nose and formerly pale cheeks.

 

He stammered and mumbled at the same time, "N-no, I can manage by myself."

 

She watched him as he sat on the edge of his bed and then stared as he stared straight back at her.

 

" _Rey_."

 

She flushed as she understood why he'd been staring and quickly moved to where his back was turned to her and gave him the same courtesy. Unceremoniously she threw off her old and frankly gross clothes in favor of Ben's soft nightshirt that had sleeves over her hands and the tails of the shirt almost touching her knees. She kicked her old clothes under his bed, figuring she'd decide what to do with them later.

 

When she turned back around, Ben had no shirt and was wearing loose, soft pants that matched the shirt she wore.

 

"Are you done," she asked as she stared at his back.

 

He turned to look back at her and frowned, but it had no bite to it, "You know, you're supposed to ask that before you turn around."

 

She shrugged and tried not to blush. Instead of sitting there awkwardly staring at him, she decided to hop underneath the blankets, leaving Ben with the briefest of glimpses of her bare, tanned legs. He closed his eyes and told himself to stop being so painfully awkward and embarrassingly nervous as he slipped into his side.

 

Ben couldn’t really figure out why he was so nervous either. He avoided eye contact with Rey in favor of turning onto his side to turn off the weakly lit lamp. Staying on his side, half off the bed, he tried to conjure a reason for why he was so fidgety. Of course, Ben knew what—he blushed in the cover of the night—he knew what _it_ was, and he knew that it wasn’t very often (not ever) that he shared a bed with a pretty girl who had no pants on and was wearing _his_ shirt. However, he was positive that the thoughts of _that_ was not what made him feel on the verge of vomiting.

 

In truth, he hadn’t thought of Rey that way really ever. Not when he’d had to pop open her shirt to cool her fever and not even when he’d laid his head and fallen asleep _on her chest_ — _for Christ’s sake_ —but it was because she was _Rey_. She was perfect and kind to him when no one else was and made him feel talented and appreciated and God, he loved her so much.

 

He paused, body tensing even further than it already was. He loved her. Not in the way his uncle loved his sister, but much more like how his father loved his mother. Now, she was here with him again, hopefully for good, and it was the little things perhaps that had set him off like this. How she had kissed his head and run her fingers through his hair or gently helped him walk to his room and ran her hand along his ribs in a comforting gesture. It made her more beautiful to him than he had ever found her before when he’d spent every single day sketching her features down to the last dazzling freckle. As he was frozen, hand still outstretched to where he had been turning the lamp off, a whole life flashed before his eyes and he wanted it more than he’d wanted anything.

 

He wanted to always fall asleep like this, where he could turn off the light but still hear her breathing and feel her warmth beside him and know she was there without having to see her. He wanted to wake up with her too every day, and also live every day with her by his side, and he couldn’t help it, but he was terrified. Then he felt a thin arm wrap around his waist and pull him into a relaxed position. The arm briefly moved to pull his quilt over his shoulder before resuming its spot before being joined by another arm that snaked underneath his head and down to rest on his chest. All this contact brought Rey flush against his back. Her face was pressed into the base of his neck, and he could feel her smile and the little puffs of warm breath that littered his skin with goosebumps. He smiled and closed his eyes, relaxing at last.

 

_He loved her._


	18. What Home Is

When Rey woke up the next day, light had long been filtering through the window, and she was surrounding something warm and soft. The trembling was what had awoken her. She opened her eyes to see herself wrapped tightly around a shaking Ben. Recognizing the sounds coming from him as the sounds that she normally woke up to herself making in the night, she turned him over and whispered for him to wake up. She brushed his hair away from his face soothingly and he immediately bolted up.

 

His eyes were frantic until they landed on her, and he broke into a relieved smile and hugged her to him tightly. Rey's eyes widened and she made a squeak of surprise, but Rey had very few objections to being hugged ever, so she quickly settled in.

 

"What's all this about," she chuckled lightly into the crook of his neck.

 

His hand came up and petted the back of her head as he murmured almost in awe, "I dreamed that I was alone. That my mother and father left again and that you went with them. I dream that every night, but then I woke up and you were right here," his arms hold her all the more securely to him, "and the dream was nothing."

 

Rey's smile widened, and she realized she had been dazedly smiling into him all along, "Of course you're not alone. I'm never leaving you alone again. I promise."

 

The whole conversation put everything back into perspective for her. Perhaps Ben was not alone anymore, but she certainly was. She was still an orphan in a train station who had lied about it to the only people who ever meant anything to her. Despite returning to her friends, nothing had changed. Rey would still be alone so long as she was still being untruthful.

 

Her fingers stopped running up and down Ben's spine, instead absentmindedly finding a notch and circling it, and she whispered, "I have something I have to show you."

 

He too stills as realization sets in. She was supposed to tell him everything that day. To his guilt, he felt very intrigued and nosy, but he only felt the need to help his friend from the ill situation that he was most certain she was facing. To him, all signs pointed towards child abuse and a terrible foster home. He was just shy of certain that she would take him to her foster home and he would see a home of poverty and depression. It was fairly often that children would be adopted only to work in a house to care for families with too many children. Ben suspected this most likely to be the case.

 

He nodded and gulped nervously as he pulled away, "We should probably get dressed then."

 

Rey blushed as she finally took in just how much of Ben's bare skin she had just been pressed against. He stumbled over to his wardrobe and pulled on a shirt, effectively stifling whatever curiosity she had about his figure. Having no other clothes she reached under the bed where she had kicked her old ones and made to put them on if not for the curious glance of her friend.

 

"What?"

 

"Didn't you wear those yesterday?"

 

She shrugged, "Yes?"

 

"Don't you want to wear clean clothes?"

 

Once again, she shrugged, "Beggars cannot be choosers."

 

"All you have to do is ask," he said softly and politely, not wanting to offend her.

 

She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling very self-conscious and foolish, "O-okay."

 

Ben nodded and crouched down in front of a drawer and explained as he opened it and rifled through trinkets within it, "My mother used to live here with my uncle before my parents were married. She left several things, and I collected them for whenever I," he blushed as he realized his confession was hardly that of an almost grown boy's, "missed her. Anyway, she left a dress, here."

 

Rey stared at the offered dress and blanched. It was the finest thing she had ever seen, which meant that it probably wasn't nearly as fine as she made it out to be, but she had never worn anything of color before, much less patterned, and much less of a different fabric texture than threadbare. It was blue with white polkas and buttons and it seemed to shimmer as if it were made of silk. She recognized that it most likely was not silk, but the comparison made was enough for her to stand looking at the dress in shock.

 

"Rey," Ben's voice broke her from her reverie.

 

"Ben, this dress would actually cost more than I would, and it's so nice and I'm covered in dirt, I would ruin it somehow. I can't wear it."

 

"My mother wouldn't mind, and you would look very nice in it," he almost choked on his words as he realized he had said them aloud, but pressed on valiantly anyway, "and if it would make you feel better about accepting it, you're welcome to a bath."

 

Her eyes had the same faraway gleam in them, "A bath?"

 

Ben smiled and nodded, gesturing her to follow him. No one was up in the house yet as Rey followed him down the hall to the bathroom where, true to his word, a real bathtub was tucked into the wall. He sank to his knees, sitting on his heels as he leaned over to twist some knobs.

 

"What do those do?"

 

"The right controls the cold water and the left controls the hot water."

 

Rey was buzzing with excitement, "You mean to tell me you have a hot water heater in your house?"

 

His eyes were puzzled and almost sad as he affirmed her question.

 

She smiled impossibly wide and watched water pour out of the faucet with rapt attention, giggling when steam started to curl up from up the gushing of it. Gently, he tugged on her wrist so that her palm was catching the water.

 

"Is the temperature alright?"

 

Rey didn't think she had ever felt anything as wonderful as hot water before. She hummed and closed her eyes as she felt it run over her hand.

 

Whispering in awe, she only replied, "The orphanage only had cold water."

 

Ben was staring fixedly at her when she opened her eyes. When he realized he had been caught, he quickly reached for the drain to stop it up as his face, neck, and ears all flushed a crimson color.

 

"What does that do?"

 

His eyes remained on the water pooling at the bottom of the tub, "It stops the water from draining so that it fills up and you can get in."

 

They both sat staring as the water level rose steadily. Rey, because she had never seen it before, and Ben, because he was making it a point not to stare anywhere else. When Rey was concerned that the tub would overflow, Ben turned the knobs, and the water stopped coming out.

 

He reached across and grabbed two bottles of what both appeared to be soap, "Hair wash and—"

 

Rey cut him off, baffled, "There's soap specifically made for hair?"

 

Ben chuckled in spite of himself, "Yes, and this one is for your skin."

 

Rey memorized which one was which and nodded. Ben stood and set the folded dress onto a chair and left her to it. It wasn't until her fingers became shriveled and wrinkly that she stepped out of the bath feeling cleaned and nicer than she had in the whole of her life. With unbidden excitement, she looked at the dress and reached for it with a dripping hand before realizing she needed to dry before she could do anything at all. Ben had also set out a towel on the sink counter and she quickly used it to towel off and dry where she had dripped water onto the floor.

 

Never in her life had Rey ever worn a dress before, her saving grace was the small tag at the collar that indicated it was the back. She pulled it over her head with ease. Leia would have been a bit bigger than her at the time as the dress hung off of her bony shoulders and collar bones ever so slightly, but Rey wasn't surprised considering she hardly looked like a woman anyway after sixteen years of starvation. The extra fabric was easily collected with a white colored sash around her waist that made Rey almost as excited as she'd been to wear a dress in the first place.

 

She deemed herself positively fashionable and excitedly opened the door with a dimpled grin. Ben was slumped against the wall, probably waiting for her to help if she needed it, and then she had taken so long, he'd fallen asleep. He'd already gotten himself dressed for the day, and he looked comical with his trouser-clad, long legs stretched across the hallway and a suspender slipped from off his shoulder. Rey saved the image in her head to remember whenever she was in need of something cheerful.

 

The squeaking of the hinges on the door made him groggily open his eyes to see Rey standing over him in a real dress. Her skin was still flushed from the hot water and being scrubbed clean, and her hair had a slight curl in it when it was wet. He stood up suddenly and pulled his suspender back into its rightful spot sheepishly. Every time he was with her he felt like such a fool, and yet the only thing he wanted to do was to be with her all of the time.

 

He smiled down at her and before his survival instincts could stop his mouth from embarrassing him as it always did, he murmured, "Beautiful."

 

She blushed at the same time that he did, and he ducked his head and went to drain the bathtub for her. He picked up his nightshirt that she had clearly made an attempt to fold but very crudely and walked it over to her side of the bed for her to reuse were she to stay with him again. When he turned back to look at her again, she was chewing her lip nervously.

 

"Are you alright?"

 

She nodded, but she still looked very nervous, "I am. I just don't want you to hate me."

 

Ben blinked stupidly, "Why would I ever hate you, Rey?"

 

Rey hugged herself, shrinking back slightly, "I haven't been honest about things. I've lied to you so many times."

 

He understood what she was talking about then, thinking of all the times she'd talked about her foster home and her lovely foster family and mother and there was no possible way that he could ever be angry with her for it, "Rey, it's not really lying if I never believed it in the first place, and I'm not angry, and I'll never hate you. Never."

 

Her eyes widened a fraction, but she only nodded and took a step towards the door. He made to follow her when a door opened down the hallway and his mother stepped out.

 

Leia came to stop in front of the two teenagers and crossed her arms, "Where are the two of you headed?"

 

Rey seemed suddenly more nervous than before and fiddled with the sash on the dress so Ben replied for the both of them, "For a walk."

 

His mother seemed unbothered by the idea and scanned him over, "Well it looks like you're feeling better?"

 

Ben realized he'd been walking unaided all morning, "Oh, I suppose so. I still feel weak but...yes, better."

 

She smiled warmly and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek, "Good," her eyes roamed over Rey delightedly, "Was that my dress?"

 

Rey flushed and bowed her head, "Yes, I'm sorry, Ben said you wouldn't mind, but I can take it o—"

 

She laid a hand comfortingly on the young woman's shoulder, "No, I don't mind at all. I would've given it away years ago after I'd had Ben anyway, I never could fit back into those dresses. I think it's just where it needs to be and it looks better on you than it ever did on me."

 

Rey smiled slightly, she had a feeling Leia was very beautiful as a younger woman, "I don't know about that."

 

Leia's hand patted her cheek affectionately, "Well I do, now you two better get on with that walk."

 

Ben took Rey's arm and led her outside before gesturing for her to lead the way. It took Rey a few moments to breathe and ready herself, but once she started walking in the direction of the train station, she felt oddly numb. As Ben neared the train station he felt confusion. He knew that had been where his father had found her at and also where she had been left as a child, but he wasn't sure what either of those things had to do with her confession. When they came to stand at the wall, he was very confused. There were no people around and he couldn't help but feel slightly unsafe. The train station wasn't always the safest place to be.

 

Rey turned to give him a severe look, "Keep quiet, and trust me."

 

She pulled her arm from his and gave a loose wall panel an experienced tug, effectively removing it from the wall, and at the last minute he remember to whisper, "What are you doing, you could get arrested by the station officers!"

 

"Trust me," she hissed in response as she stepped through the hole.

 

He followed her inside, and she replaced the panel behind him. Once inside, he found himself staring at a tall misplaced ladder.

 

"Rey, why is there a ladder in the wall?"

 

"It was left here during construction. Now, up, you have to go first since I'm in a dress."

 

"Where does it go?"

 

"The rafters."

 

He was terribly confused, " _Why_ are we going to the rafters?"

 

" _Why_ are you asking so many questions?"

 

He grumbled and started to climb up the ladder. His legs started to feel wobbly again around the midpoint of the ladder, and he pressed his forehead against a bar to stave off a dizzy spell. A nudge from Rey was all he needed to continue up to the top, albeit a little bit slower. Once there, he sat on a wooden beam and pinched between his eyes as he waited for Rey climb up.

 

"Now you go across the beam to that square of boards over there."

 

He looked over at to see all of the train station below him and gulped, "Rey, what happens if I lose my balance? This is insane, no one should walk on these rafters it's dangerous."

 

Something like hurt flashed across her face before she shook her head and pulled him up by his arm, "I'm sorry, I know it's a lot and I'll help you, but please do this for me just this once."

 

He allowed himself to be moved by her. She instructed him to use the two beams running at eye level as hand rails, and she lightly held him around the waist as a security measure. By no means was he afraid of heights, but he'd never wished to walk over an entire train station with jelly for legs. The small rafter was one of the longest walks of his life and he was already dreading having to go back over it. She allowed him to sit then and she sat opposite him next to a stack of magazines.

 

He noticed the stack and wondered how they had gotten up there, "What is this place?"

 

She crossed her arms, "My room."

 

Rey rifled through her stack of catalogs and booklets and threw several at him casually explaining what they were, "This was how I learned sign language. When I turned thirteen, I got myself this one to circle all of the things that I would wish for my birthday and pretend that they were coming. I picked up this one because the lady on the cover looked sort of like me and I could imagine she was my mother."

 

Ben caught them all, and though he was still unsure of what she meant by all of it, he had a sinking feeling in his stomach, "Rey, I don't understand."

 

She pointed to a pile of layered newspapers, "This is where I sleep. I ran away from the orphanage a long time ago, Ben. I never had a foster family. I don't even think the government knows I exist anymore."

 

A panic set into Ben's fluttering heart, "But-but you couldn't live here, no one could live here. There's no blankets, you would freeze to death in the winter. No food or water, you would starve. And—God—it's a train station! There's too many dangerous people here and you're so...small, you'd get abducted. Or caught by the guards. You can't have—you—that's impossible—"

 

Rey smoothed our the skirt on her dress and was surprised at how calm she was once everything was out in the open, "It has been very cold, yes, but actually I make enough off of begging for occasional bread and there is running water in the bathroom. As for the danger, of you recall the time I missed a lesson and came back with bruises, I had actually been grabbed by a deranged man—homeless, like myself—but had found my way out. I'm quite resourceful as you can see."

 

Ben shook his head and the fog of denial started to clear from his head, horror setting in, "No wonder you were so sick you live—how did I not notice that—you had told me you'd never had a bed before, and I hadn't thought you meant _this_. I should have known. It's so obvious to me now, how could I have not known, Rey? I'm so sorry, I should have given you more food and asked you to stay more often and never let you go back in the dark—"

 

"Ben, don't do that. It's my fault. Don't feel guilty for what I didn't tell you, and I'll always be grateful for everything you and Luke ever did for me. You are the most special people to me."

 

"Why didn't you tell me?"

 

"When a child is homeless, the immediate reaction is to send them to an orphanage and I...I could never go back there. They would punish me for running away and I would only catch a worse disease and die. I'm sorry but at the time I didn't know you or Luke well enough to know what you would do, and I panicked."

 

Ben couldn't help all the signs that had passed him by of her homelessness. All of his first interactions with her. He could have been kinder. The only thing she had been looking for was companionship. He shouldn't have grabbed her so roughly or shouted at her when he caught her in the parlor. He should have offered her friendship instead of making her be the one to initiate all contact with him, to constantly have to chase after him and all of his moods. What had his situation been compared to hers? How many times had she comforted him when it clearly should have been the other way around. Rey watched the steady flow of guilt roll over his always expressive face as he bit his lip so hard she feared he would bust the skin over it.

 

She crossed her way back over to him and ran her fingers through his hair as was her sudden greatest enjoyment and whispered to him, "Please don't feel guilty. Besides, this was always the place that I felt safest until I met you and Luke. Try not to worry."

 

He suddenly grabbed her hand and held it close to him, "Let's go home, Rey. Let's go _home_."

 

"Home," Rey blinked.

 

He stood up, swaying slightly but his eyes were steady as he looked down at her, "I won't ever let you come back here. You have a home now. I'll buy you every single thing you wanted inside that catalog. You can have your own bed upstairs that is not made of newspapers. Come home."

 

Tears were just on the verge of spilling over Rey's cheeks, "But Ben, that's your family, I don't want to get in the way somehow—"

 

He brushed his hand against some of the tears that fell despite all her efforts, "No, I will hate myself forever being so selfish. If you don't have your own family then you can have mine. My mother would make you breakfast and braid your hair every day and tell you how much she had always wanted a daughter. My father can teach you how to drive. He's bringing home his dog so you can have a dog too. My uncle would play the piano with you every day because he's missed you and your lessons so much, he hasn't even played in a month, and I," he faltered for a moment but recovered hastily, "I can be whatever you want me to be."

 

When she enveloped him in an abrupt embrace, he hardly had space to breathe but hardly cared. He cradled her head against his chest as she cried happy tears, giving off wet laughs that rattled his bones and tickled. Leia was waiting for them when they returned, Ben stumbling against Rey, the two looking blissfully happy with red-rimmed eyes. His mother seemed to almost know exactly what had happened before he even told her.

 

"Rey is going to stay with us."

 

She smiled knowingly, "I had a feeling. In that case, I really do insist she actually sleep in her room," her gaze was lighthearted but accusing, just as a mother's would be.

 

Equally embarrassed in their lack of secrecy, they blushed and nodded, slipping past her to sit together on their window seat in the front parlor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was a bit late but I just started my very first week of college ever so that was a bit stressful, but I’m good now and ready to keep going with this fic. I’m going to extend the chapter count because there’s no way I can finish this in two chapters lol. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed!


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